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The FTC's enforcement (in concert with the DoJ's) is responsive, not prescriptive, except under the interpretation of anti-trust law, which to my understanding is very robust for checking what NN proponents are fearful of happening, if ISPs in fact should make those moves.Responsive is not ok for a needed utility that many other companies run business on.
Scenario: 2025 Comcast is found to have hindered x amount of small to medium sized businesses, of which 1% may be big innovations/companies that could have provided jobs and advancement. For this they have to pay a double digit million dollar fine ($25m let's say) from the FTC in after-the-damage fines. Small beans for controlling competitive threats which we know is where every large fish goes in capitalism as a natural course. Monopolies need to be checked upfront when it comes to a utility that the entire country runs off of now. ISPs are hindering innovation currently, companies built on top of the network are not.
> Are you so sure there would be no potential risks to innovation and a bequeathing of great power to ISPs by having them declared utilities?
Eventually we will go to Open-access networks/muni broadband[1] where lines will be upgradable and commonly owned, municipal maybe because of the ISPs greed overreach. When the lines are utilities owned by the cities/localities like water, power lines then companies that improve the services get benefits and there can be multiple actual competitive companies competing for your customers through customer service, pricing and improvements to the networks.
I think that making it Title II, common carrier as well as taking ownership of the lines allowing companies to service them will lead to a more solid internet foundation.
In the 90s, cable/broadband companies were innovative and improving speeds. Getting on cable internet in '96 and the leap from 56k was revolutionary, it innovated and changed everything. Currently we should be getting gigabit and higher, but the ISPs are greedily bleeding us dry and stealing markets that could be. They are not the innovative companies that brought broadband speeds in the late 90s/00s, they are actively a weight on American innovation. Google Fiber competition changed everything for a year or two, Cox here even came out with gigabit which they can easily provide removing some channels as well. But they stopped expanding it when Google Fiber left due to ISP thuggery.
ISPs are our gateway to the internet, we need that to be innovative and how you do that is competition, there is no true competition. We want innovative companies running networks like the companies they were in the 90s.
The vast majority US only has 0 or 1 valid ISP with decent speeds if that at 25-100 Mbps[2][3].
ISPs are the biggest monopoly threat regarding open internet as they control the levers, not a company that operates on top of the internet in the market.
It can't get worse in terms of our ISPs.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Municipal_broadband
[2] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/08/us-br...
[3] https://consumerist.com/2014/03/07/heres-what-lack-of-broadb...