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F.C.C. Repeals Net Neutrality Rules

nytimes.com

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Re: F.C.C. Repeals Net Neutrality Rules

#491

Post by [deleted] »

gthtjtkt wrote: post #87
Dangeranger wrote: post #34

This is proof positive that the current FCC commission has ignored the will of the voters on this issue. Support for Net Neutrality was overwhelming and bi-partisan, yet Ajit Pai just plowed forward without consideration for what the citizens demanded. This is government at its worst.

We live in an oligarchy, the will of the voters hasn't been relevant for a long time: > Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organised groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746

[deleted]

Re: F.C.C. Repeals Net Neutrality Rules

#492

Post by socrates1998 »

Slowly but surely, our open internet will get choked. This is just one step in horrible path that will lead to our largest corporations controlling almost everything in our lives with very little competition.

I am blaming the tech giants for this ruling. They are the only ones with enough power to challenge this horrible ruling and they sat idle and watched it happen.

They may have given lip service to net neutrality, but their lack of enthusiasm and almost zero effort speaks volumes on their true opinions.

Microsoft crossed over to the dark side a long time ago.

Now, Google, Apple, Facebook join them in completely abandoning the ethos upon which the companies were founded.

I have been skeptical of their true intentions for years, and facebook has probably been corrupt since day one, but I thought if they were able to keep net neutrality, then I would think there was a chance for them.

No longer. They are gone. Truly sad day for the world.

Re: F.C.C. Repeals Net Neutrality Rules

#493

Post by heurist »

briga wrote: post #404

Here's my question: why was such a momentous decision decided by a board of five people? A decision that will affect hundreds of millions of people was decided by five people. Isn't that insane? Whatever happened to democracy in America?

This is what American voters chose last year.

Re: F.C.C. Repeals Net Neutrality Rules

#494

Post by juris »

dlp211 wrote: post #463
crisdux wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm always surprised that folks on here don't think about the future of last mile connectivity being wireless, instead of wired. Next generation wireless networks (5G) are poised to have broadband like speeds, faster latency, and high bandwidth. Wireless operators have been pretty explicit in that their plan to get into the home broadband game. These networks are a few years away from a broad roll out, AT&T is starti…

Because wireless spectrum is finite. Anyone who's been on LTE since it started rolling out can tell you how degraded the network has become since more people came on to it.

Hehe, you know, line of sight solutions like lasers would be epically cool here.

Re: F.C.C. Repeals Net Neutrality Rules

#495

Post by stfwn »

noetic_techy wrote: post #325
wvenable wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ACA was actually a conservative plan that is actually good for people. In some sense, you could argue that everybody agreed with it until it became a partisan issue. NN is also good for people and also has bipartisan support (from constituents) but just got repealed. Yes, the sky won't fall but it is now a little darker.

Depends on how you spin it. Yes it was a conservative plan originally. The reasoning went something like: "Too many poor people are showing up to hospitals without health insurance and getting treated for free, driving up the cost for everyone else. We need to FORCE them to buy health insurance or else there is a penalty!" Doesn't sound that great in those terms, but that's exactly what you got. Change the way you ta…

> Doesn't sound that great in those terms, but that's exactly what you got.

Imho, many solutions don't benefit from a partisan branding. Some things are just good ideas. If research shows it's simply cheaper to hire a bunch of people to offer the homeless free apartments and a simple job no-questions-asked than to keep cleaning up after them, keep designing the city to be anti-homeless and keep paying for the all the police time to deal with them.. Well, you'd have to be pretty damn stupid not to put that idea into law. But if you put a partisan stamp on it (‘We have to help people’ or ‘We need to keep poor people from bothering us’) all of the sudden you have the other camp against you.

Re: F.C.C. Repeals Net Neutrality Rules

#496

Post by Clanan »

murph-almighty wrote: post #162
Clanan wrote: post #116

Here are the salient quotes from the repeal which, I think, indicate the tech reaction to it might be overblown and might be "encouraged" by big tech players who aren't doing this for altruistic reasons. The key here is that the repeal allows the FTC to regulate things, and it's better at breaking monopolistic practices. (I'm still not sold on the argument that this will push innovation, though.) > 500-504 The FTC’s…

I'm going to bite- aside from AT&T and Time Warner, when is the last time the FTC has taken a pro-consumer action related to trusts?

I'm not very familiar with their history, honestly. But aren't you excluding two very good examples? Abstractly, I consider their effectiveness as separate from whether this should be under their purview. If they're ineffective, they should be fixed instead of having other agencies subsume their responsibilities.

Re: F.C.C. Repeals Net Neutrality Rules

#497

Post by chisleu »

juris wrote: post #135

This wouldn't be a problem if ISP's weren't de facto monopolies. If there was competition in this space, then there would be incentive to improve the infrastructure and Internet speeds. However, ISP's kill competition by making legal arrangements with local governments to only do business with them, and by cutting competitors' cables. Since we have no way to guarantee reasonable speeds to small time websites now, we…

YES.

Hopefully when sanity takes office, we don't repeal the changes in net neutrality, but rather repeal the laws that created these insane corporate monopolies in the first place!

Re: F.C.C. Repeals Net Neutrality Rules

#499

Post by [deleted] »

tptacek wrote: post #127

The voters elected a Republican government. That a Republican-led FCC would err on the side of under-regulating telecommunications companies is about the least surprising outcome you can imagine. Anybody who told you that lobbying the FCC was going to make a difference here was, whether they meant to or not, selling a bill of goods. As someone who respects but mostly profoundly disagrees with principled Republican la…

[deleted]

Re: F.C.C. Repeals Net Neutrality Rules

#500

Post by maxsilver »

DigitalJack wrote: post #477
maxsilver wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a private citizen, can I (snip) just lay a super long fiber cable straight to (the internet). Yes. I worked on a startup ISP for a few years, which attempted to do this. It's actually really easy to do : 1) Pick a point where you can get connection to the internet. (Backhaul). This is usually a phone companies central office, but it can also be at a data centre or other point of presence. 2) Run fiber cable from…

I wonder if this would be feasible at the neighborhood level via Home owners association. The neighborhood gets a tower and microwave link to a backhaul station, and provides internet via wifi or wires to the neighborhood. I think our neighboorhood is about 130 houses. probably not enough to make it cost effective. On the flip side, maybe starting a local company to provide LOS microwave hookups to the various neighb…

If you can somehow convince your HOA to let you put up a tower, then yes, it's feasible. And if you are doing microwave link only, it's pretty cheap.

You can rent space on a nearby cell tower for a pricy-but-not-insane monthly fee, and they'll usually have decent backhaul already present. (American Tower had a WISP sales program specifically for this at one point, I'm not sure if they still do). Run point-to-point from there to your neighborhood via some microwave WISP gear.

If you had a volunteer from the HOA willing to setup and manage it (a bigger ask than it sounds like), and if all 130 houses would agree to pay $50/month, then the math would work out OK (at least, using pricing I got in suburban Michigan about 4 years ago).

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