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The FCC plan to undo its net neutrality rules

washingtonpost.com

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Re: The FCC plan to undo its net neutrality rules

#141

Post by yo-code-sucks »

hanspragt wrote: post #77
sxates wrote: post #51

I'm paying 30% more each month to use a local ISP that's dedicated to Net Neutrality and online privacy (sonic.net) instead of Comcast/xfinity, because Comcast, along with the other large telecom companies, are actively undermining competitive markets, consumer freedom, and in a sense, our democracy. An extra $20-30/month is a small price to pay to keep what little competition they have alive. I'd encourage everyone…

I am a Sonic subscriber myself, but they just resell AT&T so I am not sure how much a difference it really makes.

Only in areas that they haven't laid fiber.

Re: The FCC plan to undo its net neutrality rules

#142

Post by GeneralMayhem »

doctorshady wrote: post #115

So, I'm just going to ask outright; what would it take to get a politician like Pai investigated? I'd find it very hard to believe at this point that he doesn't have his hands stuck in exactly the sort of pies (no pun intended) that could get him in trouble.

Well, first, you'd need even a single person in his party not to be in it with him, and to be willing to cross party lines to do what's right. That's obviously not going to happen.

Second, you'd need corruption to be illegal. Since the people who benefit from it are the ones writing the laws, it's not, at least not in the particular ways they generally do it.

Re: The FCC plan to undo its net neutrality rules

#143

Post by nickbauman »

outsidetheparty wrote: post #30
splintercell wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How on earth does letting ISPs milk more money out of their existing network incentivize those ISPs to expand that network? The fundamental idea is that the amount of investment done in a venture is directly proportional to the profitability of that venture. If govt makes a regulation saying that Google can provide Hangouts service, but it cannot charge more for Enterprise Hangouts features, then Google has no addi…

Eliminating net neutrality incentivizes ISPs to build auxiliary services that they can artificially support by throttling the bandwidth of competing products. It incentivizes them to seek profit by favoring some net traffic over other net traffic. It does not in any way incentivize them to build larger or better networks. It does not incentivize them to invest in their infrastructure. All it does is let them make mor…

Exactly this. Eliminating net neutrality is all about incentivizing rent-seeking business models for incumbents. Not about encouraging innovation.

Re: The FCC plan to undo its net neutrality rules

#144

Post by problems »

rayiner wrote: post #84
ficho wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's irrelevant, if anything in your example you should compare growth in productivity for bits and for water independently and see if they manage to meet their demands Also water is a much more finite supply. The point of my example was that as you leave government out of the tap water market and instead of getting more of it, you get less, more expensive and of lesser quality. Economics teach that in some industr…

The difference in demand is highly relevant: U.S. water utilities can't even attract enough investment to replace century-old lead pipes and sewers; similarly tepid investment in internet infrastructure would have left us all with dial-up still. The U.K. and France have both privatized their water systems and it has worked fine. Conversely, U.S. water systems, which are mostly still publicly owned, are a total disast…

> The U.K. does a good job balancing the interests. There is a single, regulated monopoly that owns most of the last mile (BT Openreach), but the regulations are designed so that the monopoly is actually very profitable.

Yeah, the situation is similar in Canada, the CRTC has forced the big ISPs to lease to smaller ones. It's led to some great reductions in our costs, we used to be limited by extremely low data caps - they're now much higher or gone for a bit extra. Speeds have comparably gone up about 10x in a span of a few years.

I don't even think they'd need to be nearly as aggressive with the net neutrality laws if they could manage something similar - the competition creates a much better environment to address the problems.

It's a matter of creating a competitive market instead of restricting or destroying one.

Re: The FCC plan to undo its net neutrality rules

#145

Post by problems »

tw04 wrote: post #14
IAmGarrett wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This whole battle has felt like the consumers versus the ISP's. Is there economic advantages to consumers if Net Neutrality is eliminated?

Sure - you'll get video streaming from content providers who are able to pay large sums of money without hitting against the artificial caps currently in place. Of course, that also means it'll kill any competitors not willing or able to pay the same extortion, so in the end you'll have less choice, but at least you'll have saved money. Except you won't really save money because once the current administration allows…

> Of course, that also means it'll kill any competitors not willing or able to pay the same extortion, so in the end you'll have less choice, but at least you'll have saved money.

You might save a few bucks in the short run, but lack of competition doesn't tend to be good for markets - especially ones which can rapidly change like online services. Less choice generally means you're paying more.

Re: The FCC plan to undo its net neutrality rules

#146

Post by frankzinger »

doctorshady wrote: post #115

So, I'm just going to ask outright; what would it take to get a politician like Pai investigated? I'd find it very hard to believe at this point that he doesn't have his hands stuck in exactly the sort of pies (no pun intended) that could get him in trouble.

I see a few people in this thread asking this question.

It's a large part of this administration's MO. Kill all regulation in favour of corporate growth. Trump talks about it all the time and he's taken direct action himself to achieve it. There's no reason to believe Pai is running his own scam here.

Re: The FCC plan to undo its net neutrality rules

#147

Post by doctorshady »

frankzinger wrote: post #146
doctorshady wrote: post #115

So, I'm just going to ask outright; what would it take to get a politician like Pai investigated? I'd find it very hard to believe at this point that he doesn't have his hands stuck in exactly the sort of pies (no pun intended) that could get him in trouble.

I see a few people in this thread asking this question. It's a large part of this administration's MO. Kill all regulation in favour of corporate growth. Trump talks about it all the time and he's taken direct action himself to achieve it. There's no reason to believe Pai is running his own scam here.

Sure, but he's been in the FCC well before Trump has been in office, and his views haven't particularly changed. There's no reason why they can't be running things together now of course, but I'd be surprised if they were together from the start.

Re: The FCC plan to undo its net neutrality rules

#148

Post by doctorshady »

GeneralMayhem wrote: post #142
doctorshady wrote: post #115

So, I'm just going to ask outright; what would it take to get a politician like Pai investigated? I'd find it very hard to believe at this point that he doesn't have his hands stuck in exactly the sort of pies (no pun intended) that could get him in trouble.

Well, first, you'd need even a single person in his party not to be in it with him, and to be willing to cross party lines to do what's right. That's obviously not going to happen. Second, you'd need corruption to be illegal. Since the people who benefit from it are the ones writing the laws, it's not, at least not in the particular ways they generally do it.

Maybe this is a stupid question, but why would it have to be someone of the same party? Why couldn't it just be some unhappy members of the FCC staff? Considering the jarring change from Wheeler to Pai, there's got to be a few people with a good look at his schedule that don't approve of it.

Re: The FCC plan to undo its net neutrality rules

#149

Post by r00fus »

ficho wrote: post #49

"“Two years ago, I warned that we were making a serious mistake,” Pai said. “It’s basic economics: The more heavily you regulate something, the less of it you’re likely to get.” Just reading this makes me angry. Has he ever heard of monopolies / oligopolies, or simply the place of government in regulating public utilities. Apply his quote to water supplies and see what happens.

You presume that Pai even cares about whether his words make sense. His voice has the tones of dictat.

Re: The FCC plan to undo its net neutrality rules

#150

Post by r00fus »

hanspragt wrote: post #77
sxates wrote: post #51

I'm paying 30% more each month to use a local ISP that's dedicated to Net Neutrality and online privacy (sonic.net) instead of Comcast/xfinity, because Comcast, along with the other large telecom companies, are actively undermining competitive markets, consumer freedom, and in a sense, our democracy. An extra $20-30/month is a small price to pay to keep what little competition they have alive. I'd encourage everyone…

I am a Sonic subscriber myself, but they just resell AT&T so I am not sure how much a difference it really makes.

Sonic actually provides it's own fiber to the home to some areas (FTTH). Their Fiber to the Node (FTTN) is resold AT&T.
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