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FCC approves plan to consider paid priority on Internet

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Re: FCC approves plan to consider paid priority on Internet

#261

Post by drewcrawford »

rayiner wrote: post #219
mortenjorck wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok. That's 120 days to make Title II a household word. Broadband's current classification as an information service, as if it's some sort of MovieFone for the 21st century, is so far removed from reality that the public should be in an uproar about it. Verizon itself has sought to classify its fiber buildouts under Title II so it can get fixed-rate access to existing right-of-way infrastructure, [1] on the technicali…

You really do not want broadband classified under Title II. You will get the war you want, but it will be a war everyone loses. Why do you think DSL is such a ghetto? It's because it's subject to a higher level of regulations, and nobody wants to invest money in such a highly-regulated industry: http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Goldman-Sachs-Wants-Veriz... . Classifying cable broadband under Title II will definitel…

I live in Austin which is a very densely-populated regional tech hub. Here we have three 30-mbit FTTN ISPs which is more competition than pretty much anywhere else in the US.

Earlier this year Google announced they were bringing Google Fiber here. Immediately all the ISPs announced that they, too, would be offering FTTH speeds. One company announced 300mbit, another rolled out 300mbit as part of a roadmap to gigabit, and the third actually rolled out gigabit well ahead of Google Fiber, which is still applying for permits.

I agree with you in principle that there is some margin below which companies will not invest in expensive capital expenditures. However there is also a margin above which companies will not invest in capital expenditures, because they have a sure thing going. The question is where those lines are.

The data from Austin show that in a market considered "exceptionally competitive" by American standards, companies are willing to invest an order of magnitude more in capital expenditures than they currently do just by threatening to create a lower-margin market. Google's work here, which so far consists of exactly 0 fiber installs, a landing page, and a contract with the city, has been so effective at transforming the market here that it's being argued by locals that it would be more efficient to forget about actually installing any fiber and they should just make announcements in one city after another and wait for the ISPs to do it for them.

Re: FCC approves plan to consider paid priority on Internet

#262

Post by rayiner »

opendais wrote: post #249
rayiner wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really do not want broadband classified under Title II. You will get the war you want, but it will be a war everyone loses. Why do you think DSL is such a ghetto? It's because it's subject to a higher level of regulations, and nobody wants to invest money in such a highly-regulated industry: http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Goldman-Sachs-Wants-Veriz... . Classifying cable broadband under Title II will definitel…

You are once again leaving out the important bits that don't fit your story. The facts are an example of regulation arbitrage, not some fatal flaw in Title 2 / Common Carrier. The 'Fatal Flaw' is the FCC doesn't say "All consumer facing ISPs are Common Carriers under Title 2" but "Technology X is under Title II and Technology Y is not". Even from your own article "In this case what has Wall Street's heart all a flutt…

You concede that higher levels of regulation increase regulatory costs. But you assume that as long as you make all regulation equally burdensome, the market will somehow fix things. But you're ignoring the fact that capital is fluid, and will flow out of regulated industries like telecom into less regulated industries. You can't invoke the market then ignore basic aspects of how the market works.

Places in Europe are also much more willing to outright subsidize telecom investment: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/12/the-broadband-gap-w... ("Sweden has built one of the fastest and most widely deployed broadband networks in Europe because its government granted tax breaks for infrastructure investments, directly subsidized rural deployment, and, perhaps most significantly, required state-owned municipal utilities to create local backbone networks, reducing the cost for the local telephone company to provide service.")

Re: FCC approves plan to consider paid priority on Internet

#263

Post by danielweber »

julien_c wrote: post #255
briandear wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nationalizing anything nearly always leads to lower quality. Compare the toll roads in France to the "free" autobahns in Germany. The French toll routes are far better maintained. Another case is health care, compare an NHS experience with a hip replacement in the UK with a hip replacement in France (or the US.) In the UK, the waiting list is measured in 6+ months, while in the US or France, it is almost immediate. F…

Hip replacement is most definitely nationalized in France.

The doctors are not employed by the state, as they are in the UK.

There are as many different ways of running a health care system as there are countries. It's not the US in one bucket, everyone else in a second bucket. The set up of the Sweden system looks more like the US than it does like Canada or Taiwan, which both have single-payer.

Re: FCC approves plan to consider paid priority on Internet

#264

Post by pcwalton »

rayiner wrote: post #219
mortenjorck wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok. That's 120 days to make Title II a household word. Broadband's current classification as an information service, as if it's some sort of MovieFone for the 21st century, is so far removed from reality that the public should be in an uproar about it. Verizon itself has sought to classify its fiber buildouts under Title II so it can get fixed-rate access to existing right-of-way infrastructure, [1] on the technicali…

You really do not want broadband classified under Title II. You will get the war you want, but it will be a war everyone loses. Why do you think DSL is such a ghetto? It's because it's subject to a higher level of regulations, and nobody wants to invest money in such a highly-regulated industry: http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Goldman-Sachs-Wants-Veriz... . Classifying cable broadband under Title II will definitel…

That link doesn't talk about network regulation, rather about unions.

Re: FCC approves plan to consider paid priority on Internet

#265

Post by rayiner »

drewcrawford wrote: post #261
rayiner wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really do not want broadband classified under Title II. You will get the war you want, but it will be a war everyone loses. Why do you think DSL is such a ghetto? It's because it's subject to a higher level of regulations, and nobody wants to invest money in such a highly-regulated industry: http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Goldman-Sachs-Wants-Veriz... . Classifying cable broadband under Title II will definitel…

I live in Austin which is a very densely-populated regional tech hub. Here we have three 30-mbit FTTN ISPs which is more competition than pretty much anywhere else in the US. Earlier this year Google announced they were bringing Google Fiber here. Immediately all the ISPs announced that they, too, would be offering FTTH speeds. One company announced 300mbit, another rolled out 300mbit as part of a roadmap to gigabit,…

Ask yourself: why does Austin already have three FTTN ISP's when San Francisco doesn't? It wasn't because they had a higher level of regulation than other cities, it was because they had less.

Re: FCC approves plan to consider paid priority on Internet

#267

Post by opendais »

rayiner wrote: post #262
opendais wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are once again leaving out the important bits that don't fit your story. The facts are an example of regulation arbitrage, not some fatal flaw in Title 2 / Common Carrier. The 'Fatal Flaw' is the FCC doesn't say "All consumer facing ISPs are Common Carriers under Title 2" but "Technology X is under Title II and Technology Y is not". Even from your own article "In this case what has Wall Street's heart all a flutt…

You concede that higher levels of regulation increase regulatory costs. But you assume that as long as you make all regulation equally burdensome, the market will somehow fix things. But you're ignoring the fact that capital is fluid, and will flow out of regulated industries like telecom into less regulated industries. You can't invoke the market then ignore basic aspects of how the market works. Places in Europe ar…

Please explain how all other utilities and common carriers are effective in the US and able to receive sufficient capital investment to provide reliable service?

Having a near-monopoly reduces risk significantly.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2011/11/13/366988/over-half... We subsidize Utilities & Telecommunications roughly equally via tax breaks.

Oh, and they get subsidies like Sweden too: https://www.ncta.com/news-and-events/media-room/article/2338

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_broadband_plan#Sweden Sweden didn't even put 1 billion in.

So umm, you are pretty providing all the evidence that greater intervention in the market than even I'm suggesting will improve things...?

confused

Re: FCC approves plan to consider paid priority on Internet

#268

Post by isamuel »

The actual notice of proposed rulemaking (or "NPRM," as ad-law nerds call it): http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-14-61A...

I haven't read it in full yet, but I've read the introduction, and the press coverage (surprise!) does not seem quite right to me.

Re: FCC approves plan to consider paid priority on Internet

#269

Post by danielweber »

rayiner wrote: post #212
politician wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Investors and shareholders are not in favor of pouring billions of dollars a year into infrastructure either. That's why we're seeing this rent seeking behavior, and one reason why we have slower speeds than other modern nations. Yes, I am in favor of municipal fiber-to-the-home solutions paid for with public dollars given the critical importance of these "dumb pipes".

> Investors and shareholders are not in favor of pouring billions of dollars a year into infrastructure either. Comcast spent $5.4 billion on capital expenditures in 2013: http://www.cmcsa.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=821438 . TWC spent $3.2 billion: http://ir.timewarnercable.com/investor-relations/investor-ne... . Verizon and AT&T regularly top the list of companies with the highest U.S. capital expenditures, and…

Comcast's average user uses 2-5 GB/month.

This bears highlighting. The water company, regulated as a public utility, will fine people for using "too much" water when they decree they are running out. And water usage is a lot easier to model than broadband. Do you want that same mentality running the broadband companies?

Re: FCC approves plan to consider paid priority on Internet

#270

Post by rayiner »

politician wrote: post #242
rayiner wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Investors and shareholders are not in favor of pouring billions of dollars a year into infrastructure either. Comcast spent $5.4 billion on capital expenditures in 2013: http://www.cmcsa.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=821438 . TWC spent $3.2 billion: http://ir.timewarnercable.com/investor-relations/investor-ne... . Verizon and AT&T regularly top the list of companies with the highest U.S. capital expenditures, and…

> Comcast spent... Absolute dollars isn't as interesting as a trend. According to the National Cable Telecommunications Association, expenditure on broadband infrastructure has declined over the past 5 years. http://www.vox.com/2014/5/12/5711082/big-cable-says-broadban... > We compare quite favorably to countries like Canada and Australia. According to a 2013 report by Ookla, US ranks 31st in download speeds. http://…

And Canada ranks #37, and Australia #55. The average speed on Ookla's test for the U.S. was 24.34 megabits. Germany was at 25.38 and the UK at 27.01.

It's insane to compare a country like the U.S. to a country like Belgium that is more than ten times more dense. If you look at the northeastern states, which have densities closer to Europe (500-1000 per square mile versus 90 per square mile which is the U.S. average), average speeds range from 30-38 megabits, well ahead of the U.K. and Germany which are comparable dense, and on par with countries like Belgium, etc.

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