Partisan, much?
This entire article. So much it's silly.
You mention ISP lobbying arms, as if their opinion is a surprise
Fox News, who have never been "fair & balanced" and chant republican rhetoric so loud they don't even deny it anymore,
The Liberals, who are just jumping on the bandwagen for the good reviews (because of course everything is politics, if one side wants it the other has to hate it)
You are correct, we don't know the details, but you don't even mention the one thing we do know: this reclassifies internet under "Title II" regulation, making it a public utility, just like phone lines are.
Meaning: all traffic is treated equally no matter where it's going, ISPs can't throttle speeds based on where it's going, ISPs can't charge customers (customers in this case being companies with web services, like Netflix) more to use their magic packet inspection powers to make customers connect to their sites "faster", meaning well established companies who could pay to keep traffic headed to their servers from being throttled won't have an upperhand over disruptive startups who can't.
Basically a new Netflix competitor won't suffer from "lag", and have to pay to make it go away.
However, I do agree that Title II provides broad regulatory power to the FCC, being over 100 pages long it always makes me uneasy to have to "trust" that the FCC will only prevent network providers from discriminatory actions and nothing more.
On the other hand, we in the U.S. are ranked 13th in worldwide in internet speed, and we still pay more than most of you for it. Comcast owns 75% of ISP market, making it a damn near monopoly. There's absolutely zero incentive for ISPs to improve speeds or lower prices. So if FCC says, "you can't call it broadband unless it's 25 down and 5 up" then I say "o.k."
Will ISPs have to pay a lot more into their networks to improve them? Yes. Fuck them.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
