171–180 of 452 posts
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The worst part is involving the FCC at all.
They are the federal communications commission. Isn't this, err, right up their alley ?
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I don't think net neutrality will dictate that support staff be located in America.
No, but part of the idea is that you will get small local providers again (like you did fifteen to twenty years ago), and five-man companies don't usually outsource tech support to India.
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Explain how the two ideas aren't related.
that's not how this works. you're the one that made the original unsubstantiated claim. the burden is now on you to substantiate your original claim. explain the mechanism by which classifying internet service as a utility enhances the ability of the NSA to record that data.
I understand the desire to regulate the internet as a utility, but are they going to actually regulate it like a utility or are they going to call it a common carrier and then just make up a few BS rules that need to be followed. I have a sinking feeling that all this will result in is a situation where monopolies are given out to the existing players and no one is forced to do anything to upgrade the existing servic…
That's exactly right. A utility implies a commodity item. Take the electric business for example, you might compete on price, but quality is never part of the equation. There isn't a "better" electricity. It's all the same. A phone line is a phone line. You can't pay more for a better quality phone line -- it facilitates phone calls. There aren't "faster" phone lines -- a phone call is a phone call. Obviously I am ta…
The current state of broadband doesn't have any competition to destroy with regulation... last-mile internet should fall under a utility because it's already been tested in the market and there simply hasn't been any demonstration of competition because there is no direct financial incentive on the open market to overbuild on the last mile and compete.
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Comparing Title II utilities to water and electricity is silly. How happy are you with your landline telephone and cable TV services? You know, the ones that everyone hates and is replacing with internet-carried alternatives?
My landline telephone is very satisfactory. I've never encountered any service disruptions with it. In fact, I can't think of a single time in my entire life where I've picked up the phone and not had a usable dialtone on the other end, or where I've placed a call (to another landline) and received a bad connection. The single time I had a problem with how it was billed, I called the state regulator who worked with m…
I replaced my landline with an Ooma (a VOIP phone which let me port my old landline number) which sounds WORLDS better, lets me manage personal blocklists, aggregates community blocklists to automatically filter incoming calls from telemarketers, political parties, etc, sends voicemails to my email, integrates with Google Voice, can ring on multiple phones or devices, and other such things. It's in a completely different class of service, and it costs a fraction of what my competing local offerings do.
I understand the desire to regulate the internet as a utility, but are they going to actually regulate it like a utility or are they going to call it a common carrier and then just make up a few BS rules that need to be followed. I have a sinking feeling that all this will result in is a situation where monopolies are given out to the existing players and no one is forced to do anything to upgrade the existing servic…
That's exactly right. A utility implies a commodity item. Take the electric business for example, you might compete on price, but quality is never part of the equation. There isn't a "better" electricity. It's all the same. A phone line is a phone line. You can't pay more for a better quality phone line -- it facilitates phone calls. There aren't "faster" phone lines -- a phone call is a phone call. Obviously I am ta…
How can competition be reduced from that as the starting point?
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>market forces that encourage those improvements. Like a Comcast monopoly? You mean those market forces?
Comcast is not a monopoly. This is the sort of misunderstanding that I'm talking about. AT&T was a monopoly and the USPO is still a first class mail monopoly. I suspect Comcast is just the best option in your location and you're dissatisfied with it. Bummer for you, and I sincerely mean that. When industries get regulated by the government they get "protected". Protected from upstarts with new and better technology,…
I understand the desire to regulate the internet as a utility, but are they going to actually regulate it like a utility or are they going to call it a common carrier and then just make up a few BS rules that need to be followed. I have a sinking feeling that all this will result in is a situation where monopolies are given out to the existing players and no one is forced to do anything to upgrade the existing servic…
I have a sinking feeling that all this will result in is a situation where monopolies are given out to the existing players and no one is forced to do anything to upgrade the existing service. It's naive to think it would be anything but this. We like the Internet as it is today but for some reason we need to have the FCC control it in order to try to keep it the way it is.
That, and we don't like how the major telecoms exploit us all for huge profits off the backs of decade old taxpayer funded infrastructure they got through political manipulation and now sit on for free money.
The golden age of Internet access was in the late 90s, when over-twisted pair dialup was still a thing but the regulations meant the wire runners had to license it out at fair rates, so you would get a hundred ISPs offering you service for dollars a month. But that could never scale, and we ended up with DSL and Cable Internet without any of that open market aspect where we are all taken advantage of for corporate profit.
That is not to say that Title II is anything good. It does not solve the central problem that ISPs have no incentive to improve the networks, all it does is compel fixed rate competition, which is only good for keeping us exactly where we are, when the technologies already exist to give us so much better.
On the other hand, I look at my other utilities and realize I have absolutely no complaints. Yeah, the power goes out from time to time, but that is just an inconvenience. As it stands, my internet is just as reliable as my power in terms of outages (not including the occasional speed fluctuation).
As long as it doesn't turn into a pay for use type deal and sticks with the current model of pay for bandwidth I suppose I'd be ok with this. There are just too many different moving parts for the cynical and rational parts of my brain to agree on.
Edit: Oh, and as long as censorship never becomes a thing.
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>> their regulations have to fit within restrictions that are defined and may be revised by Congress This is only notionally true, and history is replete with examples of federal agencies declaring their own authority over things which were obviously not envisioned so. While congress could act to change that, they don't, so power collects.
That's usually because Congress doesn't object. You may as well say Congress is unaccountable because of public apathy.