How To Fight The FCC On Net Neutrality (Opinion)

[VincentP]

CHRIS.RANSDELL The difference now is what is available on the internet and who is consuming this content. Streamed content on the internet will overtake content purchased through cable companies if it hasn't already. There is also a vast amount of news and information available that was never there before. Lastly, the majority of consumers that would never of had access 15 years ago now have access not just through computers but on their phone. There has never been more incentive for corporations to try monetize and control access to the internet.

 

[turkey3_scratch]

Let's not forget that if they would charge packages to access a site like Toms, just go through a VPN.

 

[godnodog]

As a portuguese living in Portugal was surprised to read some people giving an example of Portugal, the article of the Latimesis misleading, all mobile isp providers have limited data plans, no website and I mean No website or service is in any form limited, unless if specifically ordered by a court (illegal streeaming, torrents,etc), what happens is you can have extra services to allow you to use specific services even if you have used your data plans, there are even specific contracted data plans that gives users "unlimited" data when using certain apps like facebook, in other words that data does not count as mobile internet data, and other cases you can use freely some services of the isp in an exclusive mode like tv channels using for example the "nos tv" app.
Some isp prevent some of their services to be used by users of other isp, its not the isp itself stopping its users from using other isp services.
No one here complains about net neutrality issues, its non existent, at least none that I am aware of.

 

[marksnothere]

...of course, all these straw-man scenarios never happened in the 30 years of internet before the 2015 "net neutrality" rule change. And if an incident did occur, it was brought out into the daylight and dealt with. But, hey! Let's keep the government in charge of the internet. They do such a great job running healthcare, student loans, the Veterans Administration, and the post office, what could go wrong! Also, ignore the fact that this was pushed by Google money to gain access to utility poles for their fiber network. It's about FREEEEEEDOM, man!

 

[cryoburner]

The difference between that example and cable TV packages is that the cable company needs to pay the channels for access to their content, not the other way around.

Not quite. Most of the offerings provided by cable are available via local broadcast. The function of the cable company previously was simply to collect those broadcasts and improve the delivery of them. You were never paying for content - that's what the commercials are for - you were paying for a quality signal. In our current state of the internet, you pay for signal, and the ads on sites fund the content. But hey, if you really dig the cable model and don't mind paying all those nifty fees, upcharges, and extras for 400-500 channels you aren't going to watch for the one channel you will, then you're going to love where this is going.

This is not at all accurate. When widespread cable TV service first started really becoming popular around the late 80s to early 90s, the main draw of the service was the cable-only channels that you couldn't get for free. You were primarily paying for the premium content, and the free, ad-supported local channels were largely included as an extra bonus, so you wouldn't need to also use an antenna to get those for free. And at least then, the cable-only channels, which already outnumbered the free local offerings, tended to have significantly fewer, or in some cases no commercial breaks compared to the local channels. They didn't need many advertisements, since the cable companies, and in turn the subscribers, were paying for access to them. Today, many of those cable channels have increased their number of advertisements to be comparable to the free broadcast channels, but that's the channels trying to gain additional revenue, and the cable companies still need to pay for access to their content. And no, most channels were not available via local broadcast then, and definitely are not today.

Another point you're missing is that those free local channels are still available for free today, via an antenna, and within the last decade or so the transmission quality of local channels was improved to where you can actually get a higher bitrate HD video stream over an antenna for free, than you can through a cable or satellite package. You're not paying the cable company for access to local channels. You're paying them for access to additional channels that they in turn need to pay for. You seem to have a misunderstanding about how cable subscriptions work and your analogy does not hold up at all. I would agree that today's cable TV service is arguably overpriced for what you get, and requires one to pay for lots of content they aren't interested in, but much of the restrictions put in place to prevent you from ordering individual channels are due to the networks who own the channels, not the cable or satellite providers. The comparison of paying your ISP extra to access an article on a site like Tom's Hardware is far removed from reality, and certainly doesn't reflect how cable TV subscriptions work.

Interestingly, America features one of the crappiest cell phone offerings in the world compared to other developed countries. Ours is both slower and substantially more costlier for a significantly smaller portion of the service provided.

America covers a very large area compared to these other developed countries, and people are spread out further, so it naturally requires far more infrastructure, and in turn greater cost to upgrade Internet and cellular services here. These countries with higher average Internet speeds generally have the bulk of their populations concentrated into a limited number of urban centers, and the population density of these urban centers is higher than that in America, making it much easier for them to expand high speed services. As an example, the highest average Internet speeds can be found in South Korea, which has an overall population density of 507 people per square kilometer, compared to the United States, which has a population density of only 35 people per square kilometer. South Korea's population is grouped much closer together, making it far easier to upgrade services to the bulk of their population. And even so, the US actually fares quite well in terms of average Internet speeds, coming in at around #10, with an average speed of about 19 Mbps, compared to South Korea's average of 29 Mbps, and well above the international average of around 7 Mbps. And aside from South Korea, all other countries average speeds less than 24 Mbps, so the handful of countries with faster average Internet speeds than the US are only slightly ahead, despite it being much easier for many of them to upgrade their infrastructure. In terms of mobile Internet speeds, the US is a bit further behind but still averages 11 Mbps, which isn't bad, again, considering that covers people spread out in small towns hundreds of miles away from the nearest major urban center. And aside from three European countries, all the other countries with faster mobile Internet than the US average 11 to 17 Mbps, so again, even wireless internet in the US is in the same ballpark as them.

One other thing that many people seem to miss, is that "net neutrality" will not prevent ISPs from charging extra for high-bandwidth use, like from streaming video, file-sharing, downloading games, or uploading files to a cloud backup service. All they need to do is transition back to plans with limited data caps and pay-per-gigabyte subscription models. If streaming video from sites like Netflix and Youtube is using a huge chunk of an ISP's resources, they can simply discontinue their existing "unlimited" plans or raise the prices for them, and transition their user base to a pay as you go model where watching a high-quality stream of a movie on Netflix might add a dollar to your Internet bill, and the bandwidth for downloading a large game through a digital distribution platform like Steam might cost you $5 or more. They might not be giving special treatment for one service over another, but they can still increase the cost for a given amount of bandwidth.

I'm not necessarily against having regulations to prevent an ISP from giving preferential treatment to one specific content provider over another, but there's a lot of misinformation going around about how these things are likely to affect the average Internet user.

 

[turkey3_scratch]

Another thing I just found from the FCC: http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2017/db0427/DOC-344591A1.pdf

Also, more on Title II vs net neutrality https://www.reddit.com/r/NeutralPolitics/comments/7ed7qd/title_ii_vs_net_neutrality/

 

[JonDol]

For not being American nor living in the US I cannot act in your place but instead I can urge you to manifest your voice because if such things will happen overthere they may also come overhere (in Europe).

 

[unclebun]

JPISHGAR, why would a price chart in Portugal be listing the prices in dollars? Wouldn't it say Euros?

 

[Olle P]

Why would a phone company prioritize VoIP or chat traffic when they are still trying to sell you a landline connection/Cell minutes and even SMS messaging?

Because a) the customers will use VoIP, video chat or similar anyway, and b) because the VoIP provider pay the phone company to be prioritized.
(And these are not mutually exclusive.)

JPISHGAR, why would a price chart in Portugal be listing the prices in dollars? Wouldn't it say Euros?

The original is in Euros:
http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-portugal-internet-20171127-story.html

 

[gggplaya]

One other thing that many people seem to miss, is that "net neutrality" will not prevent ISPs from charging extra for high-bandwidth use, like from streaming video, file-sharing, downloading games, or uploading files to a cloud backup service. All they need to do is transition back to plans with limited data caps and pay-per-gigabyte subscription models. If streaming video from sites like Netflix and Youtube is using a huge chunk of an ISP's resources, they can simply discontinue their existing "unlimited" plans or raise the prices for them, and transition their user base to a pay as you go model where watching a high-quality stream of a movie on Netflix might add a dollar to your Internet bill, and the bandwidth for downloading a large game through a digital distribution platform like Steam might cost you $5 or more. They might not be giving special treatment for one service over another, but they can still increase the cost for a given amount of bandwidth.

I'm not necessarily against having regulations to prevent an ISP from giving preferential treatment to one specific content provider over another, but there's a lot of misinformation going around about how these things are likely to affect the average Internet user.

Exactly what I'm saying, people seem to assume that everyone has an unlimited non-datacapped plan. With capped plans, net neutrality can actually hurt consumers, and limit consumer choices as Pai says. Not having net neutrality in some cases can help lower bills. Otherwise everything is just included in your normal data cap or you'll have to pay alot more for the unlimited plan. Not having net neutrality allows people to buy extra data for servies to get around your data cap. Much like Tmobile and Portugals proposed services package, which are addon's to their exisiting cellular service plans which have data caps.

 

[ibjeepr]

One other thing that many people seem to miss, is that "net neutrality" will not prevent ISPs from charging extra for high-bandwidth use, like from streaming video, file-sharing, downloading games, or uploading files to a cloud backup service. All they need to do is transition back to plans with limited data caps and pay-per-gigabyte subscription models. If streaming video from sites like Netflix and Youtube is using a huge chunk of an ISP's resources, they can simply discontinue their existing "unlimited" plans or raise the prices for them, and transition their user base to a pay as you go model where watching a high-quality stream of a movie on Netflix might add a dollar to your Internet bill, and the bandwidth for downloading a large game through a digital distribution platform like Steam might cost you $5 or more. They might not be giving special treatment for one service over another, but they can still increase the cost for a given amount of bandwidth.

I'm not necessarily against having regulations to prevent an ISP from giving preferential treatment to one specific content provider over another, but there's a lot of misinformation going around about how these things are likely to affect the average Internet user.

Exactly what I'm saying, people seem to assume that everyone has an unlimited non-datacapped plan. With capped plans, net neutrality can actually hurt consumers, and limit consumer choices as Pai says. Not having net neutrality in some cases can help lower bills. Otherwise everything is just included in your normal data cap or you'll have to pay alot more for the unlimited plan. Not having net neutrality allows people to buy extra data for servies to get around your data cap. Much like Tmobile and Portugals proposed services package, which are addon's to their exisiting cellular service plans which have data caps.

It's true that ISP's can charge based on Data speed and Data cap however the issue at hand here is based on Data source.
Not having Net Neutrality will not offer lower bills unless we go back to an AOL model from decades ago where you are just tooling around AOL servers viewing AOL provided content and not using Netscape to venture further out into the "real" internet. It would be like having an Apple internet where you are basically locked into their ecosystem unless you want to pay extra for the actual internet.
In that case I can see a possible lower bill scenario but who the hell would want that? We've moved past that.

 

[gggplaya]

One other thing that many people seem to miss, is that "net neutrality" will not prevent ISPs from charging extra for high-bandwidth use, like from streaming video, file-sharing, downloading games, or uploading files to a cloud backup service. All they need to do is transition back to plans with limited data caps and pay-per-gigabyte subscription models. If streaming video from sites like Netflix and Youtube is using a huge chunk of an ISP's resources, they can simply discontinue their existing "unlimited" plans or raise the prices for them, and transition their user base to a pay as you go model where watching a high-quality stream of a movie on Netflix might add a dollar to your Internet bill, and the bandwidth for downloading a large game through a digital distribution platform like Steam might cost you $5 or more. They might not be giving special treatment for one service over another, but they can still increase the cost for a given amount of bandwidth.

I'm not necessarily against having regulations to prevent an ISP from giving preferential treatment to one specific content provider over another, but there's a lot of misinformation going around about how these things are likely to affect the average Internet user.

Exactly what I'm saying, people seem to assume that everyone has an unlimited non-datacapped plan. With capped plans, net neutrality can actually hurt consumers, and limit consumer choices as Pai says. Not having net neutrality in some cases can help lower bills. Otherwise everything is just included in your normal data cap or you'll have to pay alot more for the unlimited plan. Not having net neutrality allows people to buy extra data for servies to get around your data cap. Much like Tmobile and Portugals proposed services package, which are addon's to their exisiting cellular service plans which have data caps.

It's true that ISP's can charge based on Data speed and Data cap however the issue at hand here is based on Data source.
Not having Net Neutrality will not offer lower bills unless we go back to an AOL model from decades ago where you are just tooling around AOL servers viewing AOL provided content and not using Netscape to venture further out into the "real" internet. It would be like having an Apple internet where you are basically locked into their ecosystem unless you want to pay extra for the actual internet.
In that case I can see a possible lower bill scenario but who the hell would want that? We've moved past that.

You dont understand what were saying. For example, Tmobiles BingeON allows you to watch as much Netflix, Youtube, Amazon prime video as you want, but its throttled to 480p resolution, but not counting against you data cap. This is technically a violation of Net Neutrality. Tmobile is saying theyre fine because even though this feature is enabled by default, you can turn the feature off, so as to not be in violation of NN. However, youre back to your normal data cap. Content providers dont seem to care, and customers love the pricing and the service so no one has bothered to challenge Tmobile on net neutrality. If someone did challenge them, I think Tmobile would lose and BingeON would be gone, screwing over all of us that have it. A $35 tablet plan(with no other tmobile service) that allows you to watch unlimited netflix is hard to beat for a parent. Its absolutely amazing on road trips. Its also amazing to have the tablet during my business travel, or someone that commutes over an hour by train(2 hours total per day) such as my friend that also has it. With strict NN, you would be limited to your data cap, or stuck buying a more expensive unlimited plan.

Im not saying NN is bad, but there are pros and cons. You need to amend the bill to have exceptions to accomdate capped data plans, and during times of heavy congestion as I suggested earlier in the thread. The problem is people are so extreme in their views, they want full NN or throw tantrums.

 

[jabliese]

Back when the Obama Administration was going to implement these rules, we had a great discussion here on Tom's. Now, Tom's puts this crap article out.

To everyone out there complaining about their local monopoly provider, the current rules pretty much cement that monopoly place. Title II regulations pretty much guarantee you will never have competition.

To anyone who is actually interested in a real discussion, I recommend looking up the comments from years ago when the FCC put these rules in place. Tom's, it's hard to find words to express how disappointed I am this article was posted.

 

[BadAsAl]

Chugot9218: I'm not parroting anything. I'm asking what I think are rational questions... Firstly, the relative overall speed of the US average Internet connection isn't really directly a net neutrality issue. Secondly, I'm asking why this is now a pressing issue when it (the largely unregulated growth of the Internet) has been the status quo for 3 or 4 decades and has seemingly worked pretty well. Lastly, if you want to talk about innuendo etc, net neutrality rules will not keep private companies from maximizing the value to their shareholders, its just more rules that have to be followed. I might add that rules often have unintended consequences and outcomes.

Chris, I had exactly the same thoughts and questions. What was wrong with it before the government "fixed" it? I am sorry but I would rather have accountability to shareholders driving change than accountability to politicians (who say they represent their people but rarely do). Every decision a business makes has to make sense to their bottom line or they go out of business. Not so with government as they have unlimited funds in our tax money. I want less government involved in business. The ISPs already had this right to do what everyone is afraid of and as you pointed out for over 20 years they did not do it. So why start now? And as long as there is a choice in who I use for internet access I can go to another company if I don't like how my ISP is behaving. But here we go again. Internet, while important, is not a right. Everyone in the world has access to it if they are willing to pay for it. Don't make me pay for you.

 

[ibjeepr]

One other thing that many people seem to miss, is that "net neutrality" will not prevent ISPs from charging extra for high-bandwidth use, like from streaming video, file-sharing, downloading games, or uploading files to a cloud backup service. All they need to do is transition back to plans with limited data caps and pay-per-gigabyte subscription models. If streaming video from sites like Netflix and Youtube is using a huge chunk of an ISP's resources, they can simply discontinue their existing "unlimited" plans or raise the prices for them, and transition their user base to a pay as you go model where watching a high-quality stream of a movie on Netflix might add a dollar to your Internet bill, and the bandwidth for downloading a large game through a digital distribution platform like Steam might cost you $5 or more. They might not be giving special treatment for one service over another, but they can still increase the cost for a given amount of bandwidth.

I'm not necessarily against having regulations to prevent an ISP from giving preferential treatment to one specific content provider over another, but there's a lot of misinformation going around about how these things are likely to affect the average Internet user.

Exactly what I'm saying, people seem to assume that everyone has an unlimited non-datacapped plan. With capped plans, net neutrality can actually hurt consumers, and limit consumer choices as Pai says. Not having net neutrality in some cases can help lower bills. Otherwise everything is just included in your normal data cap or you'll have to pay alot more for the unlimited plan. Not having net neutrality allows people to buy extra data for servies to get around your data cap. Much like Tmobile and Portugals proposed services package, which are addon's to their exisiting cellular service plans which have data caps.

It's true that ISP's can charge based on Data speed and Data cap however the issue at hand here is based on Data source.
Not having Net Neutrality will not offer lower bills unless we go back to an AOL model from decades ago where you are just tooling around AOL servers viewing AOL provided content and not using Netscape to venture further out into the "real" internet. It would be like having an Apple internet where you are basically locked into their ecosystem unless you want to pay extra for the actual internet.
In that case I can see a possible lower bill scenario but who the hell would want that? We've moved past that.

You dont understand what were saying. For example, Tmobiles BingeON allows you to watch as much Netflix, Youtube, Amazon prime video as you want, but its throttled to 480p resolution, but not counting against you data cap. This is technically a violation of Net Neutrality. Tmobile is saying theyre fine because even though this feature is enabled by default, you can turn the feature off, so as to not be in violation of NN. However, youre back to your normal data cap. Content providers dont seem to care, and customers love the pricing and the service so no one has bothered to challenge Tmobile on net neutrality. If someone did challenge them, I think Tmobile would lose and BingeON would be gone, screwing over all of us that have it. A $35 tablet plan(with no other tmobile service) that allows you to watch unlimited netflix is hard to beat for a parent. Its absolutely amazing on road trips. Its also amazing to have the tablet during my business travel, or someone that commutes over an hour by train(2 hours total per day) such as my friend that also has it. With strict NN, you would be limited to your data cap, or stuck buying a more expensive unlimited plan.

Im not saying NN is bad, but there are pros and cons. You need to amend the bill to have exceptions to accomdate capped data plans, and during times of heavy congestion as I suggested earlier in the thread. The problem is people are so extreme in their views, they want full NN or throw tantrums.

I think you are missing the point. Tmobile is not saying you are not allowed to go to "Netflix, Youtube, Amazon prime." That's the difference.
If they want to play data rate and cap games with their customers that's up to them but can you see how this works against competition when ISP's are allowed to target certain sites? If I want to watch some other streaming service Tmobile doesn't exempt from my cap then what? How is that fair? What about upstarts that are bound to fail because no one's data plan exempts it from the cap, throttles it down to un-watchable or possibly doesn't allows access to it at all? That's the danger we run into allowing Tmobile to do what they are doing. That's why the internet needs to be a level playing field just like the laws that govern all businesses.

 

[BadAsAl]

I'm always amazed at the number of people that say they can't trust the government yet have complete faith in corporations. Because only nice people run companies right?
The government may not get everything right and is usually taking money from the lobbyists of the corporations you are so sure have your best interest in mind but sometimes they actually do something right, maybe even pro-active.

Net Neutrality is one such case. Corporations are paying millions to end net neutrality. If that doesn't tell you right there what their intent is, you're a fool.

For those of you that can't remember. Cable TV started as COMMERCIAL FREE TV. That's why you had to pay for it! Do you watch a lot of commercial free Cable TV now? Yet you are still paying for it. That's how these changes work, that's how they get you.
Eliminating Net Neutrality won't result in immediate changes. The corporations will wait, then make small changes over time, then eventually the scenario in the beginning of the article will become a reality.

Stand up for Net Neutrality now so that in the future you aren't getting fleeced by a company trying to keep shareholders happy and it's CEO filthy rich.

I have LESS faith in government than I do in corporations. Government is self serving just like corporations are. They get votes by doing things their constituents want. Just like a corporation gets customers by providing services and products that we want. The biggest difference is that corporations can go out of business if they make poor decisions. Governments just print more money or make more laws or raise our taxes.

I believe in the free market and in economics. If my phone costs me $1000 a month because some corporation decided that is what they are going to charge, I'm finding another source or I'm going back to smoke signals. I'm not crying for someone in government to come make it fair. You don't have the means or don't want to pay? Tough. This is an incentive to better yourself or come up with something better (and make a bunch of money doing it).

 

[wiyosaya]

I just called the FCC using the number in the article. It was busy. Maybe a good sign, maybe not as the ISPs (telecoms) might just be spamming the comment line, too.

If I was an ISP and wanted to make as much money as possible, instead of doing this I would go to Tomshardware the company, rather than the people visiting Tomshardware, and I'd say "Hey Joe Pishgar, we are throttling every single user's connection to your site to the point where it's almost unusable. If you want people to be able to access your site without being throttled, pay us $30,000." Wouldn't this be a much smarter approach?

What you are saying is an example of what was discussed in the article, i.e., Protection Money. How is this not extortion - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extortion which in most civilized countries is illegal? Please explain this to me as I would like to understand your reasoning.

Yet along comes the spider (FCC) and declares that this form of Extortion is legal. I find it amazing that there are people out there who do not get this.

So is what you are saying is that you would be perfectly happy if a member of your local organized crime syndicate showed up at your door and said something along the lines of "we are watching the walkway from your door to the road, and unless you pay us 200 of your favorite currency each month, we will break your legs"? I am sure you would love to then pay them their specified fee so that they would not break your legs, would you not?

That the FCC did not regulate the internet in the same way as they did before the Obama administration rules is a weak argument as I see it. In no way did the previous rules make it specifically legal to do these things, and you might remember that Netflix had to pay a fee of unknown size to their ISP so that their ISP would stop throttling their content. Search using your favorite search engine for this. You will find it. It is public record. Yes, it was happening, and my bet is that it will happen more and more often if these rules pass.

These proposed rules make it specifically legal for ISPs to engage in this behavior. Sure, they all claim they will not do so, but rest assured, that after the fire dies down, they will. So, it sounds like you are amenable to legalized extortion?

And it seems that you also do not understand that ISPs have already been increasing their fees to end users year after year without adding any substantial value to their user's packages.

Sure, all the claims and fear mongering that is going on because of the proposed rule changes are imaginary at this point, however, Pai and the FCC's claims that this will improve services are just as imaginary at this point. From my experience with my ISP, I highly doubt that any performance increases will result from these rule changes.

Right now, the internet in the US works well enough, and there is a guarantee of equal access for all. If these rules pass, the guarantee of equal access will no longer exist.

Good luck with the goons knocking at your door.

 

[wiyosaya]

I'm always amazed at the number of people that say they can't trust the government yet have complete faith in corporations. Because only nice people run companies right?
The government may not get everything right and is usually taking money from the lobbyists of the corporations you are so sure have your best interest in mind but sometimes they actually do something right, maybe even pro-active.

Net Neutrality is one such case. Corporations are paying millions to end net neutrality. If that doesn't tell you right there what their intent is, you're a fool.

For those of you that can't remember. Cable TV started as COMMERCIAL FREE TV. That's why you had to pay for it! Do you watch a lot of commercial free Cable TV now? Yet you are still paying for it. That's how these changes work, that's how they get you.
Eliminating Net Neutrality won't result in immediate changes. The corporations will wait, then make small changes over time, then eventually the scenario in the beginning of the article will become a reality.

Stand up for Net Neutrality now so that in the future you aren't getting fleeced by a company trying to keep shareholders happy and it's CEO filthy rich.

I have LESS faith in government than I do in corporations. Government is self serving just like corporations are. They get votes by doing things their constituents want. Just like a corporation gets customers by providing services and products that we want. The biggest difference is that corporations can go out of business if they make poor decisions. Governments just print more money or make more laws or raise our taxes.

I believe in the free market and in economics. If my phone costs me $1000 a month because some corporation decided that is what they are going to charge, I'm finding another source or I'm going back to smoke signals. I'm not crying for someone in government to come make it fair. You don't have the means or don't want to pay? Tough. This is an incentive to better yourself or come up with something better (and make a bunch of money doing it).

Your argument works well where there is competition. However, most areas in the US have absolutely no ISP competition. This is not just rural areas, it is reasonably large metropolitan areas, too. How many ISPs do you have in your area? If it is more than one that offers broadband service, then your area is among the exceptional few in the US, and you can consider yourself lucky to live in such an area.

 

[jpishgar]

The images you'll find of "packages" are actually something else.

I stand corrected on the matter of the previous image, but the latter image is valid. However, dismissal of the validity does not dismiss the potential for this to occur in the absence of Net Neutrality. That the example cited is not valid, but another is, does not invalidate the points of the argument against unraveling Net Neutrality. What was offered was a theoretical expectation based on what we currently have from cable companies and what ISPs have attempted to do in the past. The very same actions of segmenting access, designating preferred services and sites, and so on was one of the tipping points that lead to the need to establish Net Neutrality in the first place.

If the ISPs want to milk customers for more money, why don't they just increase it to $40/month?

Oh my, but they do. They very much do. America pays more for internet access than almost all other developed nations in the world, thanks to the practices of ISPs as an oligopoly.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/internet-u-s-compare-globally-hint-slower-expensive
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-24528383
https://www.theverge.com/2015/4/1/8321437/maps-show-why-internet-is-more-expensive-us-europe-competition

What benefits does having a "$2 Netflix package" or a "$2 tech site package" have over just charging more in general?

Because they can. What's the benefit of paying $2.50 for horse armor in Oblivion, when you could just make gamers pay more for the original game? Because they can. Because a contingent of their consumers are going to tolerate the slow boil, and the rest will just grumble and accept it.

If I was an ISP and wanted to make as much money as possible, instead of doing this I would go to Tomshardware the company, rather than the people visiting Tomshardware, and I'd say "Hey Joe Pishgar, we are throttling every single user's connection to your site to the point where it's almost unusable. If you want people to be able to access your site without being throttled, pay us $30,000." Wouldn't this be a much smarter approach?

Yup. This is also part of the plan. In addition to charging consumers more for access and balkanizing available services with throttling, they'll be offering sites like ours and others the ability to allow visitors to forego that kind of strangling at the transmission level. That's what I was referring to when I mentioned the "Ransom Model". Fork over your protection money, Tom's Hardware, and none of your visitors will be inconvenienced by "less-than-premium" speeds, if you's knows whats good for ya's. How, precisely, do you think digital media, struggling already under the steady retreat of ad display revenue to keep the lights on, is going to be able to respond to that? If you said "An unprecedented increase in paywalls and subscriptions, Joe!", you'd be right. Have your card number ready.

I used the Internet all the time. I had no packages. And I don't remember being intentionally throttled from anywhere. Granted, I'm sure shady stuff happened, but it went largely under the radar.

I was totally alive then, too. I had no packages that separated content, but I also didn't have the ISPs that were experimenting with it. And there were definitely experimentations. AT&T completely blocked FaceTime. ComCast throttled BitTorrent. Verizon throttled Netflix. These are not speculative, but did in fact happen.

America covers a very large area compared to these other developed countries, and people are spread out further, so it naturally requires far more infrastructure, and in turn greater cost to upgrade Internet and cellular services here.

I dismiss the premise of your argument outright.
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population_density
Click "Density" to sort by density. Review only developed nations (to compare apples to apples), and note the names. Australia? Canada? Sweden? Norway? Finland? All operating substantially cheaper and faster internet than America, despite being significantly more spread out than we are. If you're looking for a reason that America has the craptacular internet offerings we do, look no further than the market physics of oligopoly. That is, the intentional collusion between competitors to keep prices high and choices limited in various markets to establish control over availability and access to a product. And again, this hold is cemented through the deals made between ISP lobbyists and your local municipal government. Whatever city you live in, unless it happens to be one of the smarter ones, likely has an agreement in place with your local ISP overlord to provide free cable in exchange for rules making it nearly impossible for ISP startups.

To everyone out there complaining about their local monopoly provider, the current rules pretty much cement that monopoly place. Title II regulations pretty much guarantee you will never have competition.

Not Title II, but actually local city ordinances are what make this reality we face. If you want more choice in ISPs, talk to your local city councilor or Alderman - and be insistent about it.

-JP

 

[gggplaya]

One other thing that many people seem to miss, is that "net neutrality" will not prevent ISPs from charging extra for high-bandwidth use, like from streaming video, file-sharing, downloading games, or uploading files to a cloud backup service. All they need to do is transition back to plans with limited data caps and pay-per-gigabyte subscription models. If streaming video from sites like Netflix and Youtube is using a huge chunk of an ISP's resources, they can simply discontinue their existing "unlimited" plans or raise the prices for them, and transition their user base to a pay as you go model where watching a high-quality stream of a movie on Netflix might add a dollar to your Internet bill, and the bandwidth for downloading a large game through a digital distribution platform like Steam might cost you $5 or more. They might not be giving special treatment for one service over another, but they can still increase the cost for a given amount of bandwidth.

I'm not necessarily against having regulations to prevent an ISP from giving preferential treatment to one specific content provider over another, but there's a lot of misinformation going around about how these things are likely to affect the average Internet user.

Exactly what I'm saying, people seem to assume that everyone has an unlimited non-datacapped plan. With capped plans, net neutrality can actually hurt consumers, and limit consumer choices as Pai says. Not having net neutrality in some cases can help lower bills. Otherwise everything is just included in your normal data cap or you'll have to pay alot more for the unlimited plan. Not having net neutrality allows people to buy extra data for servies to get around your data cap. Much like Tmobile and Portugals proposed services package, which are addon's to their exisiting cellular service plans which have data caps.

It's true that ISP's can charge based on Data speed and Data cap however the issue at hand here is based on Data source.
Not having Net Neutrality will not offer lower bills unless we go back to an AOL model from decades ago where you are just tooling around AOL servers viewing AOL provided content and not using Netscape to venture further out into the "real" internet. It would be like having an Apple internet where you are basically locked into their ecosystem unless you want to pay extra for the actual internet.
In that case I can see a possible lower bill scenario but who the hell would want that? We've moved past that.

You dont understand what were saying. For example, Tmobiles BingeON allows you to watch as much Netflix, Youtube, Amazon prime video as you want, but its throttled to 480p resolution, but not counting against you data cap. This is technically a violation of Net Neutrality. Tmobile is saying theyre fine because even though this feature is enabled by default, you can turn the feature off, so as to not be in violation of NN. However, youre back to your normal data cap. Content providers dont seem to care, and customers love the pricing and the service so no one has bothered to challenge Tmobile on net neutrality. If someone did challenge them, I think Tmobile would lose and BingeON would be gone, screwing over all of us that have it. A $35 tablet plan(with no other tmobile service) that allows you to watch unlimited netflix is hard to beat for a parent. Its absolutely amazing on road trips. Its also amazing to have the tablet during my business travel, or someone that commutes over an hour by train(2 hours total per day) such as my friend that also has it. With strict NN, you would be limited to your data cap, or stuck buying a more expensive unlimited plan.

Im not saying NN is bad, but there are pros and cons. You need to amend the bill to have exceptions to accomdate capped data plans, and during times of heavy congestion as I suggested earlier in the thread. The problem is people are so extreme in their views, they want full NN or throw tantrums.

I think you are missing the point. Tmobile is not saying you are not allowed to go to "Netflix, Youtube, Amazon prime." That's the difference.
If they want to play data rate and cap games with their customers that's up to them but can you see how this works against competition when ISP's are allowed to target certain sites? If I want to watch some other streaming service Tmobile doesn't exempt from my cap then what? How is that fair? What about upstarts that are bound to fail because no one's data plan exempts it from the cap, throttles it down to un-watchable or possibly doesn't allows access to it at all? That's the danger we run into allowing Tmobile to do what they are doing. That's why the internet needs to be a level playing field just like the laws that govern all businesses.

I'm not missing the point at all, i'm well aware of the pros, as i've said. But I do believe there are cons as well. At the end of the day, the consumer is the one supposed to win. I fully understand your point, it's not fair to other streaming businesses to not be allowed in the unlimited throttled 480p data. It puts them in an uncompetitive situation with netflix. Having more streaming competition leads to lower prices. But to the consumer that perhaps wants to use netflix regardless, you have to recognize you are now limiting their choices in plan pricing. You're limiting them to their data cap or paying more for an unlimited plan. That is a con for the consumer. You talk as if NN is only good, and the policy doesn't have any adverse affects. That's not true. There are pros and cons to the consumer.

Another point that people won't even conversate about, is during heavy traffic congestion. Wireless providers already have problems with traffic congestion, and home ISP's will have problems with congestion in the future. Why doesn't the NN bill allow for QOS(quality of service) policies during times of heavy congestion, say when the new season of Stranger Things is released or during the holiday breaks like thanksgiving or christmas vacation. I employ a QOS policy on my home router, why can't ISP's do the same thing??? Allow them to use a QOS policy that may throttle streaming to say 1080p quality maximum when their network hits >80% bandwidth, but not allow them to operate the policy for more than say 40 days per year or something like that. That would require them to still upgrade their networks to meet demand, but allow for reasonable technical limitations. So far I haven't seen anyone in disagreement with this, I think consumers would be understanding and fine with this. The alternative is full NN treating all internet data the same, so someone trying to do research for school, has to wait longer because too many people are streaming the new Game of Thrones episode.

 

[gggplaya]

The images you'll find of "packages" are actually something else.

I stand corrected on the matter of the previous image, but the latter image is valid. However, dismissal of the validity does not dismiss the potential for this to occur in the absence of Net Neutrality. That the example cited is not valid, but another is, does not invalidate the points of the argument against unraveling Net Neutrality. What was offered was a theoretical expectation based on what we currently have from cable companies and what ISPs have attempted to do in the past. The very same actions of segmenting access, designating preferred services and sites, and so on was one of the tipping points that lead to the need to establish Net Neutrality in the first place.

Actually the second image is still not valid in the context of what you say it is, as explained by a portuguese reader earlier in the thread. What's missing from the image is the base plan, which you get talk, text and a certain amount of data. The data in the base plan can be from 1GB/mo to 30+GB/mo. Net Neutrality exists in Portugal unlike what you said because it's apart of the European Union which has NN, the data is all treated the same based on your plan. What the graphic image proposes are addon packages that allow you to get around the data caps of the base plan for certain services you may use more of, like streaming. Here's the actual website straight from MEO: https://www.meo.pt/telemovel/tarifarios/unlimited If you were to enforce strict net neutrality, people would simply be limited to the base plan, these extra 10GB/mo addon deals wouldn't be there, instead you just pay for your overages. You have to recognize that what Pai says was actually true, unlike in your article. It would limit some consumer choices.

If the ISPs want to milk customers for more money, why don't they just increase it to $40/month?

Oh my, but they do. They very much do. America pays more for internet access than almost all other developed nations in the world, thanks to the practices of ISPs as an oligopoly.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/internet-u-s-compare-globally-hint-slower-expensive
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-24528383
https://www.theverge.com/2015/4/1/8321437/maps-show-why-internet-is-more-expensive-us-europe-competition

No on is disagreeing with the oligarchy problem. We have an issue with a lack of ISP competitive service. This needs to be fixed and in my mind is a far larger and higher priority issue than Net Neutrality. Why is NN on the forefront of internet gossip and viral news. The lack of ISP's should be up front and center, don't you agree????

If I was an ISP and wanted to make as much money as possible, instead of doing this I would go to Tomshardware the company, rather than the people visiting Tomshardware, and I'd say "Hey Joe Pishgar, we are throttling every single user's connection to your site to the point where it's almost unusable. If you want people to be able to access your site without being throttled, pay us $30,000." Wouldn't this be a much smarter approach?

Yup. This is also part of the plan. In addition to charging consumers more for access and balkanizing available services with throttling, they'll be offering sites like ours and others the ability to allow visitors to forego that kind of strangling at the transmission level. That's what I was referring to when I mentioned the "Ransom Model". Fork over your protection money, Tom's Hardware, and none of your visitors will be inconvenienced by "less-than-premium" speeds, if you's knows whats good for ya's. How, precisely, do you think digital media, struggling already under the steady retreat of ad display revenue to keep the lights on, is going to be able to respond to that? If you said "An unprecedented increase in paywalls and subscriptions, Joe!", you'd be right. Have your card number ready.

I used the Internet all the time. I had no packages. And I don't remember being intentionally throttled from anywhere. Granted, I'm sure shady stuff happened, but it went largely under the radar.

I was totally alive then, too. I had no packages that separated content, but I also didn't have the ISPs that were experimenting with it. And there were definitely experimentations. AT&T completely blocked FaceTime. ComCast throttled BitTorrent. Verizon throttled Netflix. These are not speculative, but did in fact happen.

Don't you think that ISP's should be afforded times when they do need to implement some sort of QOS(quality of service) scheme??? I use QOS in my own home, it's not much of a problem now with my 200mbps internet, but back when I only had 20mbps, it needed it for the 4-5 people I had in my house. In the future, congestion will be an issue, so why can't they implement a QOS scheme in a reasonable manner as I've explained in other posts. I remember when they throttled Netflix, I believe from my memory, it was for people grandfathered into their unlimited plan, which had zero data caps. Alot of those people were congesting the network, and some towers were very busy. From a technical standpoint it made sense to allow for more customers to have better service.

America covers a very large area compared to these other developed countries, and people are spread out further, so it naturally requires far more infrastructure, and in turn greater cost to upgrade Internet and cellular services here.

I dismiss the premise of your argument outright.
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population_density
Click "Density" to sort by density. Review only developed nations (to compare apples to apples), and note the names. Australia? Canada? Sweden? Norway? Finland? All operating substantially cheaper and faster internet than America, despite being significantly more spread out than we are. If you're looking for a reason that America has the craptacular internet offerings we do, look no further than the market physics of oligopoly. That is, the intentional collusion between competitors to keep prices high and choices limited in various markets to establish control over availability and access to a product. And again, this hold is cemented through the deals made between ISP lobbyists and your local municipal government. Whatever city you live in, unless it happens to be one of the smarter ones, likely has an agreement in place with your local ISP overlord to provide free cable in exchange for rules making it nearly impossible for ISP startups.

Your example only covers total population vs total land mass. But doesn't explain distribution. I believe the person you quoted was talking about cell providers. I've done plenty of traveling into rural areas, the density in many of these areas is extremely low, and they still have to maintain networks in these areas. The fact is, we have 3-4 main cell providers, that's enough competition where they should try to undercut each other. So the prices probably do reflect the expense of operating the network. I know a farm who hosts a cell tower, he won't tell me how much they pay him but I know it was definitely well worth giving up a little farmland for it. Those towers do cost money and in the area he lives I doubt it's really worth it for them to actually make a profit.

You seem to be talking about wired broadband, in which I think many of these ISP's are considered utilities and the government's themselves pay for some of the infrastructure, or offer favorable loans to ISP's. This is mostly another topic about ISP competition, which I agree is a problem I wish was solved. I'm locked into comcast as being my only provider of real broadband. I can get DSL, but it's only 3mbps.

 

[ibjeepr]

One other thing that many people seem to miss, is that "net neutrality" will not prevent ISPs from charging extra for high-bandwidth use, like from streaming video, file-sharing, downloading games, or uploading files to a cloud backup service. All they need to do is transition back to plans with limited data caps and pay-per-gigabyte subscription models. If streaming video from sites like Netflix and Youtube is using a huge chunk of an ISP's resources, they can simply discontinue their existing "unlimited" plans or raise the prices for them, and transition their user base to a pay as you go model where watching a high-quality stream of a movie on Netflix might add a dollar to your Internet bill, and the bandwidth for downloading a large game through a digital distribution platform like Steam might cost you $5 or more. They might not be giving special treatment for one service over another, but they can still increase the cost for a given amount of bandwidth.

I'm not necessarily against having regulations to prevent an ISP from giving preferential treatment to one specific content provider over another, but there's a lot of misinformation going around about how these things are likely to affect the average Internet user.

Exactly what I'm saying, people seem to assume that everyone has an unlimited non-datacapped plan. With capped plans, net neutrality can actually hurt consumers, and limit consumer choices as Pai says. Not having net neutrality in some cases can help lower bills. Otherwise everything is just included in your normal data cap or you'll have to pay alot more for the unlimited plan. Not having net neutrality allows people to buy extra data for servies to get around your data cap. Much like Tmobile and Portugals proposed services package, which are addon's to their exisiting cellular service plans which have data caps.

It's true that ISP's can charge based on Data speed and Data cap however the issue at hand here is based on Data source.
Not having Net Neutrality will not offer lower bills unless we go back to an AOL model from decades ago where you are just tooling around AOL servers viewing AOL provided content and not using Netscape to venture further out into the "real" internet. It would be like having an Apple internet where you are basically locked into their ecosystem unless you want to pay extra for the actual internet.
In that case I can see a possible lower bill scenario but who the hell would want that? We've moved past that.

You dont understand what were saying. For example, Tmobiles BingeON allows you to watch as much Netflix, Youtube, Amazon prime video as you want, but its throttled to 480p resolution, but not counting against you data cap. This is technically a violation of Net Neutrality. Tmobile is saying theyre fine because even though this feature is enabled by default, you can turn the feature off, so as to not be in violation of NN. However, youre back to your normal data cap. Content providers dont seem to care, and customers love the pricing and the service so no one has bothered to challenge Tmobile on net neutrality. If someone did challenge them, I think Tmobile would lose and BingeON would be gone, screwing over all of us that have it. A $35 tablet plan(with no other tmobile service) that allows you to watch unlimited netflix is hard to beat for a parent. Its absolutely amazing on road trips. Its also amazing to have the tablet during my business travel, or someone that commutes over an hour by train(2 hours total per day) such as my friend that also has it. With strict NN, you would be limited to your data cap, or stuck buying a more expensive unlimited plan.

Im not saying NN is bad, but there are pros and cons. You need to amend the bill to have exceptions to accomdate capped data plans, and during times of heavy congestion as I suggested earlier in the thread. The problem is people are so extreme in their views, they want full NN or throw tantrums.

I think you are missing the point. Tmobile is not saying you are not allowed to go to "Netflix, Youtube, Amazon prime." That's the difference.
If they want to play data rate and cap games with their customers that's up to them but can you see how this works against competition when ISP's are allowed to target certain sites? If I want to watch some other streaming service Tmobile doesn't exempt from my cap then what? How is that fair? What about upstarts that are bound to fail because no one's data plan exempts it from the cap, throttles it down to un-watchable or possibly doesn't allows access to it at all? That's the danger we run into allowing Tmobile to do what they are doing. That's why the internet needs to be a level playing field just like the laws that govern all businesses.

I'm not missing the point at all, i'm well aware of the pros, as i've said. But I do believe there are cons as well. At the end of the day, the consumer is the one supposed to win. I fully understand your point, it's not fair to other streaming businesses to not be allowed in the unlimited throttled 480p data. It puts them in an uncompetitive situation with netflix. Having more streaming competition leads to lower prices. But to the consumer that perhaps wants to use netflix regardless, you have to recognize you are now limiting their choices in plan pricing. You're limiting them to their data cap or paying more for an unlimited plan. That is a con for the consumer. You talk as if NN is only good, and the policy doesn't have any adverse affects. That's not true. There are pros and cons to the consumer.

Another point that people won't even conversate about, is during heavy traffic congestion. Wireless providers already have problems with traffic congestion, and home ISP's will have problems with congestion in the future. Why doesn't the NN bill allow for QOS(quality of service) policies during times of heavy congestion, say when the new season of Stranger Things is released or during the holiday breaks like thanksgiving or christmas vacation. I employ a QOS policy on my home router, why can't ISP's do the same thing??? Allow them to use a QOS policy that may throttle streaming to say 1080p quality maximum when their network hits >80% bandwidth, but not allow them to operate the policy for more than say 40 days per year or something like that. That would require them to still upgrade their networks to meet demand, but allow for reasonable technical limitations. So far I haven't seen anyone in disagreement with this, I think consumers would be understanding and fine with this. The alternative is full NN treating all internet data the same, so someone trying to do research for school, has to wait longer because too many people are streaming the new Game of Thrones episode.

I certainly agree that there are negatives. It's government regulation which pretty much implies negatives. The wording and scope of NN is a critical aspect allowing and disallowing countless aspects of corporate behavior and user rights. You never want to be too restrictive but you simply can't allow "true" open market either. Competition is always better than no / limited competition but the human condition simply makes some regulation necessary.

I agree that for the person that wants to piecemeal their internet, paying for only what they want could lead to lower prices but look at my cable example again. Cable still barely allows that. Only now is some a la carte shopping for channels possible and it's because of the internet. ISP's aren't likely to fine tune packages beyond data cap and data rate but they are likely to hold online services hostage. You'll pay the ISP for access and the ISP will charge the online service for access to it's customer base. A fee that will get passed on to you as well when you shop/subscribe. Internet becomes cable TV. You pay for internet access then pay extra for the "special" websites you want access to and the speed you want it at....and hope the website you want is even offered by your ISP (in other words, the website paid the ISP's ransom). It's the cable business model. That's what eliminating NN would allow ISP's to do. In the end it's you that pays for all of it and it's only CEO's and share holders that benefit. it won't get utilized to better the infrastructure like they promise.

With NN now, to get an la carte internet you would simply be dealing with more of a Roku type situation where you are using a proprietary interface that limits your online actions. Roku internet basically. That's not the ISP controlling it, that's the service you subscribed to (which could be owned by the ISP but that would have to be worded properly in NN.) There is nothing stopping that now because NN would prevent the ISP from denying the service. Eliminate NN and the ISP could simply deny Roku Internet access. Your scenario for BingOn (if taken a step farther) and my AOL example are basically be like this. I question how many people are looking to piecemeal their internet beyond a Ruko type streaming service however.

I disagree that your scenario for school work vs streaming is valid. I argue that anyone that paid for the service is allowed access to that service equally regardless of what someone deems a more valid use. If you are going to use QOS and throttle at high usage times then only critical, societal services (i.e. police, hospitals, etc) should be exempt.

 

[gggplaya]

I disagree that your scenario for school work vs streaming is valid. I argue that anyone that paid for the service is allowed access to that service equally regardless of what someone deems a more valid use. If you are going to use QOS and throttle at high usage times then only critical, societal services (i.e. police, hospitals, etc) should be exempt.

I don't believe that either stance on this subject is truly right or wrong here, but certainly a difference of opinion. You see, from my perspective, I could institute a strict bandwidth allowance for each user in my home, but that wouldn't be the most efficient use of my internet, because some users require little bandwidth but higher priority data, like web surfing and gaming. They want pages to load super quick, in short bursts, but not necessarily alot of data. However, streamers use high amounts of data for long periods of time. So it makes sense to prioritize data instead. That way the total internet bandwidth is used to it's full potential, and everyone but the streamer gets a better quality of service.

As to your ISP statements, sadly a fact of life here are localized monopolies on internet. Cable TV has stiff competition from the 2 major satelite providers. But internet does not. Don't get me wrong, Net Neutrality is necessary, but I believe they should make reasonable amendments to make sure the consumer is the one that comes out on top. The problem, however, as you can see from this OPED is that you have people misreporting, or heavily biased to write about it in extremes. The author never gave the FCC chairman a fair shake in his comments, exploring his arguement, instead just trying to destroy it. That's why I feel I need to get out here and create a dialogue to help make a better bill or amendments that are more reasonable, instead of a all-or-nothing style of legislation.

 

[ibjeepr]

I disagree that your scenario for school work vs streaming is valid. I argue that anyone that paid for the service is allowed access to that service equally regardless of what someone deems a more valid use. If you are going to use QOS and throttle at high usage times then only critical, societal services (i.e. police, hospitals, etc) should be exempt.

I don't believe that either stance on this subject is truly right or wrong here, but certainly a difference of opinion. You see, from my perspective, I could institute a strict bandwidth allowance for each user in my home, but that wouldn't be the most efficient use of my internet, because some users require little bandwidth but higher priority data, like web surfing and gaming. They want pages to load super quick, in short bursts, but not necessarily alot of data. However, streamers use high amounts of data for long periods of time. So it makes sense to prioritize data instead. That way the total internet bandwidth is used to it's full potential, and everyone but the streamer gets a better quality of service.

As to your ISP statements, sadly a fact of life here are localized monopolies on internet. Cable TV has stiff competition from the 2 major satelite providers. But internet does not. Don't get me wrong, Net Neutrality is necessary, but I believe they should make reasonable amendments to make sure the consumer is the one that comes out on top. The problem, however, as you can see from this OPED is that you have people misreporting, or heavily biased to write about it in extremes. The author never gave the FCC chairman a fair shake in his comments, exploring his arguement, instead just trying to destroy it. That's why I feel I need to get out here and create a dialogue to help make a better bill or amendments that are more reasonable, instead of a all-or-nothing style of legislation.

Ok well,
1. Your family aren't paying customers to you that expect the service that you promised them and they paid for.
2. Your home isn't a business so you can allocate your bandwidth however you want.
3. This is only possible for you because the ISP you are paying is giving you the bandwidth you paid for and expect.
4. If ISP's and the Municipalities focused on improving the infrastructure instead of being in each other pockets, properly servicing the customer instead of throttling them wouldn't be a concern.

Yes all or nothing is rarely the answer but it seems neither government nor business have the consumer in mind when this type of regulation comes up. Fixes to NN are always possible but what is proposed is throwing the baby out with the bath water essentially. It's nothing but caving to corporate lobbyists to make the rich richer.

 

[meghowell89]

the web address listed to file a complaint online is no longer working