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FCC plan would give Internet providers power to choose the sites customers see

washingtonpost.com

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Re: FCC plan would give Internet providers power to choose the sites customers see

#641

Post by jessaustin »

wmeredith wrote: post #509
awj wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's difficult to accept that they truly have the best interest of their constituents in mind. Then ... don't. If someone's actions contradict their words, don't believe their words.

To expand on this a little bit, they have their own interests in mind. Which go getting re-elected > getting rich. They'll take the bribe money as long as they think they can get re-elected. Sometimes because they can't get re-elected without it. Call your reps and let them know how you feel. If they think they won't get re-elected all the bribe money in the world doesn't really matter.

You're right, but you're wrong. In the system you describe, "good" candidates who give a hoot about their constituents' wishes will always lose elections to other candidates who are happy to fund their campaigns with bribes. This system will not fix itself. The improvements we seek will not come from voting.

Re: FCC plan would give Internet providers power to choose the sites customers see

#642

Post by jessaustin »

dpedu wrote: post #619
rexf wrote: post #589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate Comcast. Not reliable and no accountability for down time in the Bay Area. If their internet service goes down, good luck on getting an ETA on when it comes back or any actual credit to your account for lost service.

I don't know about that, I was getting pretty bad packet loss recently and the instant I described the issue the guy (after mentioning it was part of a larger outage) instantly offered me a credit. They can do good, they're just misguided.

They can do good, but since they're a monopoly it doesn't actually make them any money to do so. They're much less likely to do good things for customers than any firm in a competitive industry would be.

Re: FCC plan would give Internet providers power to choose the sites customers see

#643

Post by stult »

so33 wrote: post #415
IronWolve wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. Access (services) vs. censorship, you want to avoid the monopolies from restricting new access providers, but also don't want access providers from censoring the access. The right wants isp/telcos to be able to bundle and offer more speeds/services. Assuming it won't censor. The left assumes isp/telcos will offer services/bundles (tiers) but will censor its services/bundles. (Like it did with netflix.) As most…

In Canada, the CRTC requires the big internet providers to resell their broadband to smaller ISPs. Even then it took a decade for big ISPs like Rogers to give up on onerous bandwidth caps (which would be about 100GB a month, and, usually, worse). Even with some competition and access, it can take a while for unfavorable conditions to resolve, partially because consumers don’t really care about things like censorship,…

It's not that customers don't care, but rather the transaction costs of switching (breaking contracts, dealing with CSRs, taking the time to shop around) slow the market response to competition.

Re: FCC plan would give Internet providers power to choose the sites customers see

#644

Post by jessaustin »

s73ver_ wrote: post #580
logfromblammo wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it isn't, but nor is it reasonable for an apartment owner to establish service monopolies on their property at the expense of their renters. What alternative would you suggest?

Violent armed revolution?

Finally!

Re: FCC plan would give Internet providers power to choose the sites customers see

#645

Post by notyourday »

curun1r wrote: post #352
notyourday wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have already seen this: VZ was refusing to increase capacity to allow uncongested access to NetFlix (Netflix was willing to pay for the PNIs and the cost of the line cards to terminate those PNIs at VZ in addition to paying for their own gear). NetFlix started putting pre-roll into content sent to VZ customers to explain to them that it was VZ that was unwilling to do it. VZ threatened to sue. Netflix backed off a…

> Consumers do not give a flying f!ck about this fight I couldn't disagree more. Sure, I don't care whether Netflix or Verizon wins, but I care deeply that there isn't a situation that raises the cost of competing against Netflix/Prime/Hulu to the point where it's impossible to enter the market. Netflix should be hard to compete against because they have better content, not because they have better access to internet…

Your disagreement is worth the price of NetFlix subscription that you canceled when NetFlix caved. Oh wait, you have not canceled it. So your disagreement is worth zero, which means that you do not, actually, care.

Re: FCC plan would give Internet providers power to choose the sites customers see

#646

Post by jessaustin »

himom wrote: post #558
frogpelt wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This Net Neutrality issue sounds similar to the issue America faced in the late 1800s with the railroads. Some shippers (Standard Oil) wanted to monopolize the rails or at least they wanted rebates for shipping their freight. Others argued that the rails should offer the same rates to all shippers since they were using eminent domain in some cases to obtain property and they should exist as a shared resource.

AT&T is rapidly becoming what it once was, especially if the TW merger goes through. We’d be renting Wi-Fi cards, access and with additional fees by the second and byte if they had their way.

AT&T is rapidly becoming what it once was...

I'm more and more convinced that this was always the plan. The primary effect of the Telecom Act of 1996 has been to extract hundreds of billions of dollars from investors. All of the CLECs and other competitive types of telcos that sprouted in the spring of that law's optimism have gradually been wound back into the monopoly. Ma Bell (still for the moment two "Daughters Bell") has paid pennies on the dollar for equipment, marketing, vendor agreements, customers, etc. as these erstwhile competitors have gradually succumbed to the monopoly's failure to substantially abide by (and regulators' failure to enforce!) any of the pro-competitive measures in that law.

In retrospect, it was inevitable. Therefore, it was planned from the beginning. Telco executives and bankers have personally extracted billions from all the mergers. Generations of citizens have swallowed the fiction that we ever tried telco competition in USA. Strictly regulated POTS has been replaced with totally unregulated "information services". Perennially-unprofitable operations like FairPoint and Hawaiian Telcom have been unloaded to fools like Carlyle. The inconvenient wall between local and long-distance is gone. The expensive nerds at Bell Labs got sold, so the world can look elsewhere for subsidized progress in basic technology. All in all, a pretty good deal for Ma Bell! Since it happened over the course of decades and Americans have short memories (and since the media that could remind us doesn't want to cross her), we didn't even notice it.

Re: FCC plan would give Internet providers power to choose the sites customers see

#647

Post by Fnoord »

username223 wrote: post #591
Fnoord wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WAP, Now that's a term I've not heard in a long time, a long time [1]. I don't know about Starbucks or the USA but many places here with open WiFi have, well, open WiFi (no encryption on connection) and they have abysmal speed. I mean we are talking about multiple customers, on 2,4 GHz WiFi, in the neighborhood (city) with dense 2,4 GHz coverage. What could possibly go wrong? Plus, indeed here that type of business i…

WAP = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_access_point If you visit the US, you will find that most internet access sucks, but that public libraries are surprisingly decent. You won't be playing "Call of Duty: Kill Nazis 2017" on it, but it's perfectly decent for most uses.

Oh, that. I always just call that AP. I'm glad you guys & gals got quality libraries on the other side of the pond. I can't speak for EU but here in NL they're dwindling both in quality as well as in size and amount. I find that problematic, as there are two big interest groups who benefit from public libraries: the poor, and the elder.

Re: FCC plan would give Internet providers power to choose the sites customers see

#649

Post by 15charlimit »

rajadigopula wrote: post #648

Can someone educate me why someone is proposing such laws in the first place? What's the motive? What are they going to gain by bringing the proposed changes?

Because they have been bought and paid for by the existing ISP monopolies, who stand to gain enormously from the loss of net neutrality, at little to no extra effort on their part.

Re: FCC plan would give Internet providers power to choose the sites customers see

#650

Post by rajadigopula »

15charlimit wrote: post #649
rajadigopula wrote: post #648

Can someone educate me why someone is proposing such laws in the first place? What's the motive? What are they going to gain by bringing the proposed changes?

Because they have been bought and paid for by the existing ISP monopolies, who stand to gain enormously from the loss of net neutrality, at little to no extra effort on their part.

I see lot of downsides to that like for example in long run ISPs might end up offering their connection for free as Google/FB etc. are already providing their own ISP services (may be they started so because of this law!) => every large corporation move into ISP business offering their service for free instead of paying someone else!
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