Net neutrality

[Psalad]

Originally Posted by HHP

The FCC commissioners themselves compared the act and its operation to traditional telecom and the classification as a utilty. I've been dealing with PUC for decades so just wait for it to go into effect and when the service levels drop and the costs go up, you'll know.

Let's see, I have ONE provider and my 25mbps connection is close to $70 a month. RIGHT. Costs will go UP.

[Dirk Hofman]

Originally Posted by Psalad

First we have some of the slowest internet in the western world. That is before net neutrality, the so called free market. Problem is it never was a free marked and it always was a racket. Cable companies received local contracts to wire homes but those were exclusive... And the infrastructure was long paid off before there was any competition. The cable industry was set up to be anti competitive... And it succeeded. I still only have ONE cable provider option for high speed internet.

I can't believe there are people out there who are protecting the existing monopolies. Wow... It seems so knee jerk too.

Let the best content win, not the best funded content.

I have a very hard time understanding how people can be against net neutrality.

It's not like there's a whole lot of investment in additional fiber by the providers. Mostly it's either Google or municipalities themselves who are doing the investment... That is why our speeds are so slow, there is no competition, they don't NEED to build faster infrastructure, they have us by the cajones. Their infrastructure was mostly paid for decades ago...

Well said. I don't get it either.

[Dirk Hofman]

Originally Posted by Psalad

Let's see, I have ONE provider and my 25mbps connection is close to $70 a month. RIGHT. Costs will go UP.

Nothing about this ruling will make your costs go up or down. They're not breaking up the access monopolies, unfortunately. They're simply preventing more egregious behavior. I guess in a sense they are stopping some charges from going up in that they're not allowing another tier of speed (and presumably pricing), but they same ISP's that have everyone in the US by the cajones are still going to have their grip on the system. It's an incredibly limited action.

[Otterhound]

Originally Posted by Dirk Hofman

It is a utility. I think that's a legitimate comparison. There is no effort to regulate this in the manner suggested. This rather obvious and necessary step barely passed due to the influence being peddled by companies like Comcast. No way this is going further, no one wants it.

This is only the beginning .
I seriously hope that you are right , but my life experience says no .
K street is waiting and drooling .

[Dirk Hofman]

Originally Posted by Otterhound

This is only the beginning .
I seriously hope that you are right , but my life experience says no .
K street is waiting and drooling .

K street is where this thing almost went horribly, utterly wrong. Until some really big businesses and entrepreneurs stepped in and helped put the brakes on the original proposal.

Tom Wheeler, a former lobbyist for the cable companies and now head of the FCC originally proposed the "fast lane" plan which would have allowed ISP's to charge much more (we already pay the most in the western world) for access.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/24/te...ity-rules.html

Thankfully, he turned around and got on board with the right side of things, much to the surprise of many in the tech industry...and the ISP's. He also has a long history in tech and entrepreneurship.

[Otterhound]

Originally Posted by Dirk Hofman

K street is where this thing almost went horribly, utterly wrong. Until some really big businesses and entrepreneurs stepped in and helped put the brakes on the original proposal.

Tom Wheeler, a former lobbyist for the cable companies and now head of the FCC originally proposed the "fast lane" plan which would have allowed ISP's to charge much more (we already pay the most in the western world) for access.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/24/te...ity-rules.html

Thankfully, he turned around and got on board with the right side of things, much to the surprise of many in the tech industry...and the ISP's. He also has a long history in tech and entrepreneurship.

And , apparently , lobbying .
Ok , what was the " fast lane " plan ?

[James_214ce]

double post

[James_214ce]

This has nothing to do with freedom. Except, maybe, the freedoms AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast were enjoying that let them do basically anything they wanted to the traffic passing through their servers and routers at their sole discretion.

This has everything to do with keeping the internet the way it is today: equal, non-prioritized traffic for websites, big and small. Because the alternative is where we were headed: where ISPs -- perhaps having a conflict of interest with a competitor, like, say, Netflix, charge customers extra for guaranteed delivery in a certain amount of time. How do you do that? Well, you simply slow down (or completely stop) the other traffic. The traffic to your right-wing or left-wing blog, perhaps. Or perhaps any Netflix competitors that want to enter the space in the future. Or your mom's Etsy shop. Or maybe your VoIP phone system at work. Or whatever, whomever, however.

The argument against net neutrality is an argument for corporate freedom to exploit the entirety of the internet however they see fit. It doesn't matter how much money these corporations have poured into their infrastructure -- you don't get to take over the whole thing just because you built something large and massive that connects to it. A corporation dumping money into the clean water distribution infrastructure of a city doesn't give them ownership of or permission to modify the water that flows through it, and similarly, building infrastructure that delivers the internet to people's homes doesn't give them ownership of or permission to modify the bits of information that flow across that infrastructure.

Imagine if our public roadways were privately owned by large, profit-seeking corporations, and one morning, on your drive to work, you notice that the left-side of the road is all smooth and fast, but the right side has many more "Stop" signs, "Yield" signs, traffic lights, and obstructions that artificially slow you down -- and the only barrier to hopping into the fast, unobstructed left lane was payola to the corporation that owned it.

That's what this net neutrality thing is about, and unless you're either sitting at the top of a mega ISP corporation or have perhaps been taken in by bad or misinformation, I can't see how any home user or small businessperson would be against it.

Well, I take that back. Irrational fear of or resistance to government oversight and regulation, even when done to the absolute benefit of the common man, might do the trick.

http://forums.macnn.com/113/tech-new...i/#post4311926

[Dirk Hofman]

Originally Posted by Otterhound

And , apparently , lobbying .
Ok , what was the " fast lane " plan ?

The very thing net neutrality stops, allowing ISPs to throttle access for some customers and allow others, including themselves the high speeds. Among other things.

There are tons of articles which outline it better than I can.

[Teleman52]

So the problem is that there is not enough competition, Comcast and time warner (Same thing) have a monopoly on cable internet basically because they pay their way into exclusive deals for the infrastructure. The cable communications act of 1984 allows municipalities to make these exclusive deals.

So why wouldn't getting rid of THAT be a better way to introduce more competition into the market. If there was viable competition, Comcast wouldn't have the ability to slow people down arbitrarily because those people would just spend there money elsewhere.

Or at least, shouldn't that be the next step. I get the big business monopoly angle of this, but hasnt the local governments played just as big a role in this?

I'm really not sure which side of this issue I'm on, I admit I don't know much about it, John Oliver is right it is particularly boring isn't it? But it's important for obvious reasons. But I guess it doesn't really matter what side I'm on, this deal is done. What I do know for sure is that this new reclassification doesnt (at least not fully) solve the problem

[SongwriterFan]

Originally Posted by Dirk Hofman

I see nothing that indicates any of that is even a thought or desire,

Of course you don't.

Nobody saw federal income tax getting above the small percentage it was in the early 1900's, either. Well, a FEW did . . but they were ignored.

[Dirk Hofman]

Originally Posted by SongwriterFan

Of course you don't.

Nobody saw federal income tax getting above the small percentage it was in the early 1900's, either. Well, a FEW did . . but they were ignored.

Wow. Quite a reach.

[SongwriterFan]

Originally Posted by James_214ce

Imagine if our public roadways were privately owned by large, profit-seeking corporations, and one morning, on your drive to work, you notice that the left-side of the road is all smooth and fast, but the right side has many more "Stop" signs, "Yield" signs, traffic lights, and obstructions that artificially slow you down -- and the only barrier to hopping into the fast, unobstructed left lane was payola to the corporation that owned it.

You mean like toll roads?

[Teleman52]

Originally Posted by SongwriterFan

You mean like toll roads?

Nice, did he really not know he was describing a toll road when he wrote that?

[SongwriterFan]

Originally Posted by Teleman52

Nice, James did you really not realize you were describing a toll road exactly?

And many of the newer ones here in Texas ARE actually owned by corporations (foreign-owned, IIRC) . . . .

How many toll roads ever become "free" after being paid off? I think somebody told me that part of I-20 or I-30 here in the DFW used to be a toll road but was eventually paid off and they quit collecting tolls on it.

I think the vast majority stay on as toll roads.