FCC votes 3-2 to bring net neutrality back from the dead The FCC voted Thursday to restore America's net neutrality rules, nearly seven years after they were taken offline. Earlier this month the watchdog confirmed its intention to vote on a proposal that would reinstate net neutrality, and that day has arrived. The vote came 3-2 along party lines. Net neutrality, the idea that …
What we need in the US is a public, tax funded, ISP and fiber network. Just add a rider or something to the next budget that allocates money for road construction to stipulate that any new road construction, or work on existing roads beyond minimal maintenance (e.g. filling in potholes) requires the workers to also dig a trench or something along side the road and lay fiber cable. They then also have to provide hookups at every property lot that the road passes, or at set intervals where it can branch off to areas a ways from the actual road. It won't be the fastest way to achieve a nationwide fiber network, but it is probably the cheapest and method of least resistance. Also make it so that any state laws preventing municipalities from building their own ISP are basically null and void. If they put up a referendum and the voters approve it, they can go forward with it.
Anyone in the country can use it free of charge (other than the amount they pay in taxes) and the precepts of net neutrality will reign. Commercial ISPs are then free to do whatever they like with their networks, but they won't have government sanctioned monopolies anymore. People will have a choice and commercial ISPs will have to compete on things like service and features.
It can certainly be argued that equitable access to the "last mile" is badly needed in the US to prevent monopolistic behaviour. But that is only a tiny part of the net neutrality issue and wouldn't do anything to prevent biased provision of capacity deeper in the network, or by intermediaries such as content distribution networks. The problem is network-wide, and that means internationally too. I don't see quite how the FCC can regulate the behaviour of off-shore carriers.
The FCC can't directly, however if the US government as a whole decided they wanted to apply economic pressure to other nations, that would certainly be an option. I highly doubt it would ever be deemed worth the potential risk to diplomatic relations, but that doesn't preclude it from being a possibility if you get some brash idiot* who acts first and thinks never in the role as POTUS.
* Possibly with a penchant for overusing bronzer and red baseball caps
It was a good thing the Pai did kill it. It was NN in name only. It did not stop Comcast from throttling NetFlix, it legalized it. If you can find a copy of it, read it. It will piss you off.
What I do fault him for is he DID NOT put forward a true NN that kept the FCC out of the internet and open.
When they say they want to make ISPs a Common carrier, it is about making the internet the same as a phone company. Take a good look at your phone bill. Those extra charges will be on your ISP bill if they have their way.
As an ISP, I am against them or the upstream controlling your choices. I don't throttle my customers and I expect them to do the same. Provide quality service, and your biz will do well.
Oh, and don't block or screw with VPN traffic. If the customer paid for it, they should be able to use it.
"Law responds again to pings" - Correct words are "Law responds to actual citizen needs and desires instead of corporate bribes"
"People will switch to ISPs that don't meddle with connection speeds, if possible, if they are that upset by it." -- Sure, that would happen, if they actually had options for ISPs to switch to, and if the ISPs didn't collude to ensure that they were all meddling. There might be some few smaller ISPs that would actually provide net neutrality all on their own, but the number of people able to sign up for them is limited. Some have a few options, the vast majority only have at most 2 possible true broadband providers available (one cable and one fiber or VDSL), a great many only have one, and a ridiculous number still don't even have true broadband available at all and still only have one provider available that can't even give them service that allows for HD streaming. (I exclude satellite because anything with such high latency isn't really good broadband and is solely a last resort service.) The big providers are the ones that WILL absolutely break net neutrality to the absolute limit of what is legal, even going beyond what is legal, and if the only options are two of the big providers, customers can't vote with their wallets and let the market decide.
That argument is only valid if every citizen has the choice between every ISP.
I very much doubt that that is the case anywhere, let alone in the Land of Monopoly that is the USA.
Anyone using that argument is just a humongous hypocrite.
That argument is only valid if every citizen has the choice between every ISP.
I very much doubt that that is the case anywhere, let alone in the Land of Monopoly that is the USA.
It's pretty close to that in the UK. Every property in the country (or, hey - 99.999%) is or can be connected to the telephone network. That gives 95% of them access to over a dozen different ISPs. Then there's another 70% that also have access to an FTTP network which gives them two or three more to choose from. Then there's 60% who have coax which is one more ISP (but apparently soon to become several ISPs). These %ges are approximate and there's overlap eg; properties that have copper, coax and FTTP.
Of course it's true that at the physical level that's only one or two (rarely three) cables to choose from but we have to be realistic in that respect. The old telephone network (almost entirely provisioned solely by BT Openreach) usually has ample capacity so it's a fair choice there. The coax network is operated by Virgin Media (now owned by Liberty Global) is less generous with capacity so it'll be interesting to see how their announced wholesale offering shapes up. The FTTP networks so far appear to be run well but typically only offer a choice of two or three ISPs.
As for the concept of choice..it works reasonably well to keep the price down but in the UK at least has mostly led to a race to the bottom. The margins on residential internet are razor thin. The only reason we're now getting a national FTTP roll-out is because the telephone equipment in exchanges - although digital - is reaching end of life and it's difficult and expensive to find manufacturers still willing to make that stuff.
But I think that the UK's market has worked adequately well over the decades. There's never been much, if anything, that people genuinely couldn't do with their connection. It might have been necessary to wait (eg; having the patience to download over dinner) but by and large everyone has been able to do what they wanted to do.
"That gives 95% of them access to over a dozen different ISPs."
If you want to define "ISP" as the company they get the bill from. In reality, there will be just one company that's providing the infrastructure. It would be better if there were two or three. There could be fiber, cable and wireless. I live in a city of around 14,000 and that's what we have in addition to satellite. Up on the hill and on the outskirts, wireless is the only option since hardline would be too expensive to install for the density of possible customers. I was really hoping to switch from the cable company to fiber but when I tried to sign up, they started asking for too much PII just for a $50/month internet connection than I felt it was prudent to require. I think it's enough to give a name, address (of course), phone number and credit card. I even own the home and I'm not too shy to admit that which should confer a bit more confidence that I'm not going to skip out and stiff them for $50. Hell, I could even pay for the month in advance instead of at the end of the month for service provided.
For some reason, possibly the pain of changing, competition doesn't work well in these markets in the UK. You'd think that if one of the providers changed its contract to have annual price rises of rpi+3.9% then they'd lose business to their competitors who didn't rip customers off like this. That's not what happened - instead they all did it. Sort of reverse competition - or behaviour that looks like an effective monopoly. The mobile phone companies do this too, now. If the government cared they could implement a max one-month notice period on the customer side (I have to sign up for two years for my ISP) and a guaranteed one-click change (ISP and mobile phone provider) with punitive compensation for delays.
"I very much doubt that that is the case anywhere, let alone in the Land of Monopoly that is the USA."
There is a lot of monopoly going on, but also just the financial reality of the networks. There's a certain baseline cost to providing service in a city which means that any operator has to make that much in revenue before they can earn a profit. If 12 providers are trying to get enough customers in a city where one needs to sign up at least 50% to break even, there's going to be lots of tears and lots of angry customers that have their service terminated when their provider gives up and the next one gives up and the one after that. It can come down to there only being room for one provider in some towns which means customers don't have the choice to switch if that one provider decides that they are going to charger a premium for Netflix traffic and offer a discount for signing up to their in-house competing service. The provider may do that in every market where they can get away with it and not in places where they don't have that monopoly.
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