FCC Proposal Passes In Landmark Decision; Net Neutrality And Municipal Broadband Wins, ISPs Lose

[synphul]

If it does what it's supposed to do (at least what info has been released) it will be an improvement. Not sure whether to call it a full out win or not, but I know I'm sick and tired of big business dominating the market simply because they have cash to burn. It would be a loss if isp's were allowed to fast lane large corps purely because they could pay to play and the smaller yet just as valuable websites were pushed even further down due to inability to pay.

Not to mention I'm sick and tired of control freak isp's dictating internet access and blocking or filtering access. p2p blocks, game station blocks, precompressed images that look like pure crap because of an additional inline filter etc etc. I don't recall paying for partial service and part of the issue isn't even with my own isp. It's crap dictated by sprint because they act as the service carrier for virgin in my area.

I can't say I'm against this, without it would be the equivalent of someone cutting in line at the grocery store after you've been waiting 20min in line simply because they flipped the store an extra $50 to get fast tracked to the front of the line. It's about time the big corps have to play by the rules like everyone else.

 

[InvalidError]

Not sure whether to call it a full out win or not, but I know I'm sick and tired of big business dominating the market simply because they have cash to burn.

They are "dominating the market" simply because infrastructure is a natural monopoly: redundant "competitive" infrastructure multiplies investments and divides the market so each competitor has to recover their capital and operating costs over a smaller market share with more under-used infrastructure to maintain.

It can cost billions to enter a market and unless you charge rates on par with incumbents, pay-off will be 20+ years away if you manage to gain a significant market share. That's assuming the incumbents do not slash their prices to drive you out.

That's why so very few places have more than two wired service providers. The costs and risks are simply too high.

As far as the "fast lane" is concerned, unless your startup service generates traffic on par with Netflix and Youtube, your traffic will barely register above the noise floor and no ISP would notice it, so Title II makes no difference there aside from telling ISPs to continue not caring about those. For major disputes like Netflix which was causing peering to congest where ISPs refused to add more capacity, Title II also makes no difference - if Netflix wants to resolve a congested peering point issue, they have to look into alternative peering/transit arrangements since Netflix is entirely responsible for maintaining a healthy transit mix to ensure their Titanic amount of traffic does not hammer any one specific bottleneck absurdly hard.

 

[synphul]

Well it would affect it if it was a matter of speed, not bandwidth. Bandwidth is already covered by web hosts, you use more you pay more. Let's say I wanted to start up a company similar to netflix. It would already be a struggle being a newcomer to the market compared to someone with a foot hold. So netflix can pay $30m more than I can to ensure they have faster service. The random customer comes along, tries my site and my content takes forever to load. They go to netflix and everything downloads nice and snappy. Who do you think the customer's going to go with? It's making sure that only the elite companies with deep pockets can play the game and it's going to shove out those who can't pay for faster speeds? Many things in the u.s. are based on fairness for a good reason.

Comparing the information superhighway to real highways, is it fair you're forced to drive in a slow lane at 35mph to get back and forth to work while your wealthy neighbor gets to pass you at 70mph because he pays the highway dept $100/mo? It's really no different. Corporations already buy their way out of paying taxes and buy their way through government with lobbyists. It's no wonder smaller businesses struggle. Everyone claims it's ok for them to do because they provide x amount of jobs but at the end of the day, the vast majority of those jobs get sent overseas anyway so what difference does it make.

 

[synphul]

I'm hoping it forces isp's to stop filtering the internet access, especially when it's listed as 'unlimited'. It may not affect others, but my internet gets run through image filters that interfere and compress images (even precompressed jpeg/jpg) to the point they look horrible. I can sort of see the intention, it's supposed to reduce strain on the network. It does just the opposite. In order to clearly read graphs or see any other images, including navigational graphics on websites, I have to use a forced refresh every single time (which gets old). Once I do a forced refresh directly from the server, like magic the images clear up. Say a jpg image is 12kb originally and the isp's interfering filter cuts it in half to 6kb - I've downloaded a 6kb imgage, forced refresh and re-downloaded 12kb worth of data and overall bandwidth impact - 18kb for a 12kb image. Multiply that by however many thousands of images over however many sites I use. I'm hoping that's part of the garbage this net neutrality does away with as well.

 

[stevenrix]

Since it becomes "utility", does this mean there is also a counter attached to your consumption?

 

[synphul]

I don't think that will be an issue, since it's controlled under the fcc it will be treated more like a telecom which in the u.s. hasn't had much issue in terms of 'per minute' charges for quite some time. Local telco calls were flat rate (basic phone service), long distance had two options, pay by the minute or a flat rate 'premium' unlimited access package. Television is also fcc controlled, it has monthly packages with different tiers of programming but we don't pay by the hour of television watched.

 

[sykozis]

The Gov't has had their hand in your landline phone service since at least the 30's. Where exactly have you lost out in that deal?

With Health care reform. Prior to "Obamacare", health insurance companies were allowed to pick and choose who they covered, based on applicants' medical history. Ever had cancer? You can't get coverage. Epileptic? You can't get coverage. Bi-Polar? You can't get coverage. That's what MILLIONS of people were facing. Any disease that couldn't be cured with a 7-14 day antibiotic treatment was an automatic dis-qualifier for health insurance. Every year, the number of people that could get health insurance was dropping by the millions. What good is health insurance, if the provider drops coverage for people who actually need it? Something had to change but that has always been the 1 item nobody was willing to touch. Coverage for people with pre-existing conditions. We were the ones that NEEDED the coverage, and the reform. We're always the ones that everyone wants to screw over, until they end up in the group. My insurance rates are now lower and the insurance companies have no choice but to cover me. Exactly how insurance should work.

you're obviously too young to remember - it wasn't till the phone industry was DEREGULATED that rates came down - when it was Ma Bell (ATT) and only ATT across the country, we all had high phone rates - it cost me $2.50 a minute to call europe, now it's 10 cents. We didn't have $29.99 "all you can talk" phone service, now we do - it was de-regulation and competition that brought it down.

you're falling for the logic the idiot liberal elites push that gov't is good - look at the post office and how poor the svc is, or the IRS - wait till you're audited and you find out an idiot that can't add, but has been taught how to screw with you to get you to surrender and just pay the fines hee/she has decided to levy so he/she can maker their audit goal.

wait till they're thru - comcast, verizon, twc will all be merged, " in the interests of the public"

i agree rates are not what i'd like, don't think i'm defending the ISPs, i'm not, but again think for a minute - they gave obamacare the name "Affordable health care" and it's been anything but. This has been historically the trick in gov't - give something a really beneficial sounding name to help sell it, even if that name is the exact opposite of what it will be.

Didn't it bother anybody that the FCC chairman, former CEO of comcast btw, would not release what the proposed rules were BEFORE THE VOTE? call me old fashioned, but i kind of like open debates, but wait, that's right, this is the self proclaimed "most transparent administration" in history. Just saying something doesn't make it so

I already know how stupid the Gov't can be. I was on disability in 2007 due to cancer treatment. In 2008, they changed the tax codes, resulting in an audit. In 2007, my disability was non-taxable. A tax code change in 2008 made my disability taxable....and they made the tax code change retro-active. I got audited and fined because I didn't pay taxes on my non-taxable disability income. Thanks to that tax code change, I lost every dime I was paid by my disability insurance. Gotta love it when the Gov't intentionally makes it hard to survive.

I'm not defending the choice to keep the 300+ pages hidden from the public. I don't find anything transparent about it. However, Net Neutrality is a necessity at this point. I've questioned the appointment of Tom Wheeler since day 1. The problem is, ISPs are asking Congress to essentially pass a ban on any type of internet regulation to ensure they can continue to screw everyone over and in the future, increase the abuse we get from them.

I found Comcast causing issues on the default DNS servers 75.75.75.75 all the time. Using Google DNS 8.8.8.8 resolves any issues. The USA ISP can suck a huge 1. We are being screwed and I'm happy the US Government finally stepped inn!

Comcast isn't alone in that. I have to use an alternate DNS if I want to watch YouTube clips. I've contacted Verizon about it, but they swear the problem is on YouTube's end, even though changing DNS servers corrects the issue.

 

[palladin9479]

This is actually a good thing. Currently there exists a natural monopoly in each region because of previous laws regarding public utilities. Absolutely nothing is stopping someone from starting an "ISP", you can get a Tier I connection, setup the core routing infrastructure and do all the magic in your home office. The problem is going to arise when you attempt to establish a distribution network, the physical wires that connect you (ISP) to your customers. DSL was built onto of the phone utility lines, Cable was on top of the utility cable network, both of those are "public utilities" in so much as the wires are regulated. I could never build a second cable distribution network nor a second phone network nor a second electrical network nor a second water network. The "internet" part though was not a utility and so companies could do whatever they wanted with it without oversight. And that is where the problem lies, a competitor can not start up because they would have no access to the distribution network for the same reason a competitor electrical company can't start up.

That is what this regulation is doing. This isn't a law, that law was passed a long a$$ time ago, this is a regulatory change which is already within their power to do. They are recognizing that there should be no real difference between the regulation of the service provided (data) and the regulation of the wires used (phone / cable utilities). Now that the ISP's can no longer strangle people, your about to see the start of an explosion in carrier capacity.

 

[Reepca]

It passed? Does that mean we can read it now?

Regardless of whether one is for or against this, I find it very strange and wrong that constituents must wait for it to pass before they can read exactly what the proposal contains.

Of course a fair internet is what people want; "fairness" is an almost universal ideal. I would imagine that whether people support or oppose the proposal has more to do with whether they trust the government to do what they say than whether they want ISPs to not spy on them, not limit their bandwidth, and generally not be evil.

 

[palladin9479]

It's not a law, there is no legislation or congressional voting. It's regulations that are enacted by a commissioned that has already been granted those powers by a previous congressional vote. When those regulations become official then you'll get to look at them. If you wanted to see them earlier you need only call your congressional representative since they have the power to view pending changes to executive regulation. You are not their constituents, the FCC answers to congress and the executive branch. It's congress that ultimately answers to you and so you must go through them if you want change.

 

[Reepca]

It's not a law, there is no legislation or congressional voting. It's regulations that are enacted by a commissioned that has already been granted those powers by a previous congressional vote. When those regulations become official then you'll get to look at them. If you wanted to see them earlier you need only call your congressional representative since they have the power to view pending changes to executive regulation. You are not their constituents, the FCC answers to congress and the executive branch. It's congress that ultimately answers to you and so you must go through them if you want change.

So let me see if I have this straight... the way that voters influence regulatory policy is by voting for congresspersons who vote for people who get to personally choose what regulatory policy is, *and* by voting indirectly for president who... what was it he does again? Nominates (I should probably know this stuff...)? I guess what bugs me is how far-removed from the control of the voters the people who make these decisions are, considering that the decisions they are making seem to be rather important.

The point is, voters influence legislators, and legislators influence commission members. The source-influence, the "sunlight" of the ecosystem, if you'll bear with the analogy, should, in my opinion, also have the power to view pending changes to executive regulation. While it's a bit hard to imagine anything having an immediate effect with everything so indirect, I *could* contact my representative and attempt to influence them to attempt to influence the commission members. if I knew what the proposal contained. This reliance on representatives to tell us what's going on seems rather silly to me.

 

[palladin9479]

So let me see if I have this straight... the way that voters influence regulatory policy is by voting for congresspersons who vote for people who get to personally choose what regulatory policy is, *and* by voting indirectly for president who... what was it he does again? Nominates (I should probably know this stuff...)? I guess what bugs me is how far-removed from the control of the voters the people who make these decisions are, considering that the decisions they are making seem to be rather important.

That's exactly right, welcome to a representative democracy otherwise known as a Republic. You, the voter, have very little direct control in how you government is run, and for good reason. The average voter isn't knowledgeable enough in all the different facets, forms and problems a large country would run into to be capable of making educated votes. Instead you and your fellow voters chose someone who's entire job is to educate themselves and become knowledgeable on these issues so as to best represent you and your interests. If a politician is not representing you then it's something you need to take of locally. If there are more people locally who have different interests then yourself, well that's democracy and you can either play along or go home.

What your arguing for is direct democracy and pray that never happens. Direct democracy can only work amongst a small [strike]heterogeneous[/strike] homogenous population, the moment you have diversity it falls apart. Remember democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner.

:edit:
Correct word used, was doing other things while writing this.

 

[The Original Ralph]

It passed? Does that mean we can read it now?.....

.

DING DING DING - give that man the cigar

 

[Reepca]

So let me see if I have this straight... the way that voters influence regulatory policy is by voting for congresspersons who vote for people who get to personally choose what regulatory policy is, *and* by voting indirectly for president who... what was it he does again? Nominates (I should probably know this stuff...)? I guess what bugs me is how far-removed from the control of the voters the people who make these decisions are, considering that the decisions they are making seem to be rather important.

That's exactly right, welcome to a representative democracy otherwise known as a Republic. You, the voter, have very little direct control in how you government is run, and for good reason. The average voter isn't knowledgeable enough in all the different facets, forms and problems a large country would run into to be capable of making educated votes. Instead you and your fellow voters chose someone who's entire job is to educate themselves and become knowledgeable on these issues so as to best represent you and your interests. If a politician is not representing you then it's something you need to take of locally. If there are more people locally who have different interests then yourself, well that's democracy and you can either play along or go home.

What your arguing for is direct democracy and pray that never happens. Direct democracy can only work amongst a small heterogeneous population, the moment you have diversity it falls apart. Remember democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner.

I think you're thinking of homogeneous. And I am aware of the issues a direct democracy has, and I don't think that is what I want. I guess it just bugs me how insulated important-decision makers are from the effect of the voters. Congresspersons have to worry about representing the majority well, while appointees have to worry about pleasing the people the majority elected - it's most likely just a side-effect of the generally negative view I hold of congress.

 

[InvalidError]

I'm hoping it forces isp's to stop filtering the internet access, especially when it's listed as 'unlimited'. It may not affect others, but my internet gets run through image filters that interfere and compress images (even precompressed jpeg/jpg) to the point they look horrible.

I seriously doubt there are many ISPs that bother doing that since that would require considerable extra hardware to intercept pages, parse them, process data streams and put them back together. These days, a growing number of websites are using HTTPS by default so the streams would be encrypted and the ISP would be unable to modify them in the first place.

 

[gabrielspcs1]

Good and bad.. Good is they are not supposed to restrict traffic anymore but on the twist broadband internet can be treated like a utility so get ready for a increase in base prices and taxes.

 

[synphul]

Well I know sprint for one does it and I'm not the only one who's noticed. It's not even as if I can call sprint pcs and complain since I'm not their customer, I'm virgin's customer. You try and get ahold of virgin and ask about it and of course they say they know nothing of it and don't specifically alter things. In a sense they may be right, maybe they don't directly - so what do you do when you're customer of company A who's farming out their services and relying on company B for the final connection to the customer. It becomes a stalemate. Oddly it didn't always used to be this way, I've been a virgin mobile customer for years and the image issue didn't crop up until around 18mo ago. I also can't make any meaningful p2p connections, the local client appears to be connected but there's absolutely zero data throughput. Others have issues connecting to things like the playstation network. I know it's nothing on my end because when I use a vpn, presto it connects just fine. That means either virgin or sprint, one of them is playing gestapo with the connection. Hopefully the passing of net neutrality changes this and forces them to provide service, period. Not cherry pick what I do and don't get to connect to. It's not just my isp, others have similar issues with cable providers doing similar as well. They charge plenty for service, now they're expected to deliver.

 

[BrandonYoung]

Sadly this probably won't change much in rural eastern Washington. The FCC says we have access to 1Gbps Internet, this service is via microwave, and around $12,000/month, not counting the cost of hardware, and building a 80 foot microwave tower to get line of site to the broadcasting tower.

At least we have access to our non-broadband (10mbps/512kbps) satellite provider with 10 GB/month of data. It still beats dial-up, until we pass 10 GB, then its competitive.

I would love to see unlimited cable/fiber/dsl of 10Mbps+ within the next decade. I've been waiting 20 years already. I would gladly put up with 5Mbps satellite if it were unlimited.

 

[ricksun500]

Typical propagandistic spin for another rent-seeking victory. Your business doesn't involve operating a telecom backbone, you just ride on it... And now you expect the government to enforce special protections for your job as "technology journalist" i.e. PR mouthpiece for Intel & Google & Netflix. At least in a few years from now the robotic AI tech writer beta version will come down the pike from Mountain View to eliminate that market inefficiency

 

[memadmax]

Theres one big red flag in all of this and that is the internet being a government utility. We would've been well good enough with just the law that says the ISP's can't monitor, throttle, etc etc...

 

[anathema_forever]

I hope things get better and I feel like I can safely say I am not going to read 300+ pages of technical language so I have no real useful opinion about it. I will have to trust other peoples summaries and hope it was well written and thought out.

 

[synphul]

BrandonYoung, I feel your pain. Rural here too, only options are dialup, 3g wireless and satellite. Dialup here is 33.6 (not even 56k), 3g starts around 60-70kB/s down until 5gb, then throttles back to around 30kB/s down. Satellite wasn't much faster, constantly went out during rainstorms usually an hour or two before the cloud cover even moved in and was severely limited. I think 18gb/mo was the largest package you could get for around $90/mo and it was based on a rolling month which made it even worse. If you went several days with light to no usage, then a day of heavy usage put you over your limit, it would take several days to wipe that off the slate. Went almost 3 weeks once without internet because of it, waiting for the day of heavy usage to finally drop off (all while paying them $95/mo to not have internet). It wasn't even like they had an option to get more bandwidth if you paid more, I think I'd rather have dialup over satellite any day. The internet connectivity options throughout the u.s. as a whole are pathetic. Once you get outside of a relatively few major metro areas, it goes to complete crap.

Meanwhile some region in a jungle somewhere is getting broadband, go figure. I've seen pics friends of mine from other countries have posted where they're literally sitting in a stick hut with better internet and looking at their pics I keep trying to figure out which tree they're plugging into lmao. Need to plant me some of those broadband trees.

 

[Alec Mowat]

Home computers can't and won't get much faster than they are. Only more efficient. The next step forward is to move big data into the cloud, and we can't get that completed with such bottlenecks on the network providers.

 

[whiteodian]

My options:
Comcast - Expensive, Fast, Bad customer service
Click (city cable) - More Expensive, Fast
CenturyLink - Too slow but cheapest (I'll pass)
No internet - NOOOOooooooooooo

I just want broadband at a good price. Currently stuck with Comcast paying $65/m for a one year bundle deal. I don't know that this will really lower my prices as we've had city cable for like 10 years and the city cable is actually the most expensive.

 

[tomc100]

They haven't even release the regulations yet so nobody knows what is in them. Everyone is commenting on what they think is in the regulations. Also, why haven't they released the regulations to the public before voting on it? Also, why didn't the FCC speak before Congress and why was the White House involved in a supposedly independent agency? Everyone who is for this have their heads up their rear. Useful idiots.