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F.C.C. Is Expected to Propose Regulating the Internet as a Utility

nytimes.com

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Re: F.C.C. Is Expected to Propose Regulating the Internet as a Utility

#141

Post by brandonmenc »

punkcoder wrote: post #78
brandonmenc wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think net neutrality will dictate that support staff be located in America.

The statement was more in the direction that when it's a utility local people / municipality are responsible for the maintenance of that system, local people means that there is a far greater chance of getting local, mostly because there is someone local with _responsibility_ for keeping it working.

I worked at a utility, the phone company (GTE), in the mid-90s. Our call centers, while domestic, were certainly not local.

Customers in Muskegon, MI were always shocked that we didn't know what local street they were talking about. How could we? We were in Pennsylvania.

I don't think anyone has run a truly local call support center, for anything, in decades.

Re: F.C.C. Is Expected to Propose Regulating the Internet as a Utility

#142

Post by rhino369 »

drawkbox wrote: post #138
skylan_q wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll have to agree to this. Electricity is electricity, water is water, natural gas is natural gas. But Internet traffic isn't a homogenous substance.

Utilities are the state of being useful, profitable, or beneficial . Utilities in the US are typically public, so the internet is a public useful, profitable and beneficial utility. A utility is a platform that is standard/common so that more useful platforms can be built on top of it. Utilities become part of the stack of economic production. A utility could be seen as an economic standard. If wireless and radio are…

They aren't typically public. They are typically private companies that are regulated by a utilities commission at the state level.

Re: F.C.C. Is Expected to Propose Regulating the Internet as a Utility

#144

Post by eigenvector »

skylan_q wrote: post #103
0xdeadbeefbabe wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The worst part is involving the FCC at all.

I'll have to agree to this. Electricity is electricity, water is water, natural gas is natural gas. But Internet traffic isn't a homogenous substance.

There are certainly detailed technical regulations about what type of electricity and water your utility must provide.

Re: F.C.C. Is Expected to Propose Regulating the Internet as a Utility

#146

Post by tw04 »

djrogers wrote: post #13

Setting aside the ultimate politics and ramifications of this, it is interesting (and kind of scary) to watch the fight between a non-elected bureaucracy and our elected house of representatives to regulate the internet. Congress seems to be completely incapable of doing more than grandstanding, while the bureaucrats may wind up dramatically increasing their own power with a single stroke of their unelected pens. It'…

Except they were given the power of Title II by congress. And there's nobody that can tell you with a straight face that internet access shouldn't be subject to Title II regulations.

This is just a replay of the idiots who decided to deregulate the banking industry. "The regulations are working so well, we don't need them anymore!!11" Cable internet service and "next generation broadband" should've been classified as Title II out of the gate. The exemption was idiotic, and is playing out exactly as everyone said it would when it was first proposed. Consumers get less choice, and poorer service for a higher fee because of it.

BRILLIANT LOGIC!

Re: F.C.C. Is Expected to Propose Regulating the Internet as a Utility

#147

Post by ceejayoz »

thissideup wrote: post #64
ceejayoz wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Classifying the Internet as a utility doesn't change the various Three Letter Agencies' ability nor motiviations to surveil traffic.

You are restating exactly what you already said. Maybe you didn't understand. Taxation implies increased tracking and auditing of the good being taxed, in this context surveillance could be justifiable. Perhaps you're unable to imagine these consequences, but your claim that they have nothing to do with one another is just ignorant.

Our Internet traffic is already heavily surveilled without this entirely hypothetical Internet tax you're proposing.

The phone system is a utility, and it's certainly not the fact that it's taxable that makes the TLAs interested in wiretapping it.

Re: F.C.C. Is Expected to Propose Regulating the Internet as a Utility

#148

Post by emcrazyone »

emcrazyone wrote: post #65
ceejayoz wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I get what they're trying to accomplish, we all want faster more reliable service, but as comparison is anyone 100% happy with their utility (power, water, etc)? I am. My water is clean and I've never had an outage. My power is reasonably cheap and quite reliable. The state doesn't allow either one to raise rates exorbitantly from year to year, either, and despite that both have made major upgrades to their facilit…

this is a ridiculous comparison. You can't compare water, gas, and electrics to the likes of providing Internet. Gas, electric, water are either on or off. Internet connections come with tons of setup pitfalls. A bad DNS can make it appear your Internet is out in one way, while a broken cable inside the house can make it look broken another way and a virus on a computer is another. It's just not a simple check and yo…

I can except down votes; I just know it's folks who don't know how an ISP works - sort of a personal indicator of how ill informed a lot of people are on how things really work.

I actually own two companies. One is an ISP and the other is a PCO (Private Cable Operator) where I provide Internet over DOCSIS along with CableTV. I also have had experience dealing with right of way like utilities for putting fiber in the ground, and public WIFI.

I promise you my support costs per man-hour are much higher than your electric company or water utility; not to mention a homeowner can do most troubleshooting their self. Any schmuck can flick a breaker and turn a wrench and at a minimum it can be explained over the phone what to look for or what to smell for.

but it's not so easy when you need to understand tools like Cisco routers, BGP filters, DNS (nslookup) outputs, some dude has a virus or, worst, a torrent... NAT, DNAT setup on some brain dead Linksys routers, the list goes on.

Supplying Internet to people is an endless battle of convincing them, at times, it's their machine. You just don't have this with utilities that are either on/off, flowing or not. Rolling a truck to investigate, I just don't find as many skilled IT people as you do plumbers and electricians and it cost more to train IT people too.

We have one property that is Section-8 housing (don't ask). We supply them CableTV along with Internet. Learned the hardware this was a mistake. You have the I know it all type who will yell at my techs. even has his own cable modem running Linux, you have the crybaby type who complains her internet is too slow and pleads for us to come fix her computer, then you have the old people who don't know how to turn on a computer. These issues don't exist with utility companies. You don't have to educate end users about how water flows through a pipe, or how to flip a circuit breaker...

See with utilities, it's not that hard to figure out what the customer is complaining about REALLY. With IT/Internet, you have things that can become problems for other people. Someone running a torrent in apartment 1B, for example, can cause someone in apartment 1A to call and say the Internet is out. Of course we have ways to track this, but the equipment is expensive and it cost considerably more to teach someone how to configure a Cisco router for traffic profiling, how to look at SNMP reports, MPLS bandwidth reports, etc...

Please tell me how gas, electric, or even water has a challenge nearly as close or as costly on a per/person basis?

Re: F.C.C. Is Expected to Propose Regulating the Internet as a Utility

#149

Post by pyre »

skylan_q wrote: post #126
Windwaker wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The utility that Internet providers are providing is information .

You're calling it a utility. I guess you're just going to define it a utility, ham sandwhich is also a utility.

I'm not sure if English isn't your first language, but many words have several meanings. For example "providing utility" means "to provide something of use" per this[1] definition:

  Utility, or usefulness, is the (perceived) ability
  of something to satisfy needs or wants.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility

Re: F.C.C. Is Expected to Propose Regulating the Internet as a Utility

#150

Post by warfangle »

nickff wrote: post #111
warfangle wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about an internet provider injecting tracking scripts and advertisements into HTTP responses; an internet provider failing to respond correctly to DNS requests (so they can provide their own search engine on mistyped domains)? Both of these things have been done by ISPs - and recently. I'd consider that comparable to a utility pumping sewage.

I'd consider that equivalent to a utility not chlorinating the supply, or having sediment issues; both are unexpected and undesired behaviors which can be corrected. I do not understand the desire to compare problematic internet service to sewage-pumping through the potable water supply. Are you desperate for superlatives which will make the internet service providers look bad?

Do you understand what happens when DNS returns false negatives? It causes tons of shit to break. It's not a little bit of sediment. Maybe not sewage level catastrophe .. maybe "your water supply is contaminated for the foreseeable future. You can't drink it, not even boiling it will help, but you can continue to wash your clothes in it."
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