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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

#221

Post by jkn »

Pretty impressed with the negativity here. Just a year ago, I remember all the stories on HN with people lamenting that the FCC doesn't have the guts to regulate broadband as a utility under title II [1,2,3] (admittedly with a minority speaking against title II, most prominently rayiner, whose comments I generally look forward to for an interesting contrarian view).

Y Combinator even published an open letter[4]. Quoting:

Title II of the Communications Act seems the most appropriate way to properly define broadband ISPs to be offering telecommunications. Speaking on behalf of Y Combinator, I’m urging you to adopt such a rule.

And here we are. It seems to me that the community has always been complaining about the different FCC approaches on the subject, and in favor of title II, until the FCC yielded. Politicians must think the tech community is a frustrating beast to work with.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7750036

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7057634

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7637147

[4] http://blog.ycombinator.com/y-combinator-has-filed-an-offici...

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

#222

Post by falcolas »

cheald wrote: post #175
chronomex wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

My problem with my landline is price ($35/mo to start) and features (practically non-existent, with huge premiums charged for useful things). The service effectively hasn't changed since the 1980s, while the prices have steadily risen. 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 blockli…

> It's in a completely different class of service, and it costs a fraction of what my competing local offerings do.

However, your VOIP will not work during a power outage, during an internet outage, or any other time the VOIP company's servers are down.

Landlines work during power outages, during internet outages, and they provide around 5 nines of uptime (that's less than 6 minutes of downtime a year).

Those are the things your $35 a month buys you. How important that reliability is to you generally depends on your health. I know more than a few folks who would never give up their landline, because they have medical conditions which depend on reliable access to 911.

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

#223

Post by droopybuns »

minikites wrote: post #154
skywhopper wrote: post #14

The major critique quoted here comes from David Farber of Carnegie-Mellon, who worries that classifying Internet access under Title II will allow it to be taxed. If that's the worst thing you can think of, we're in good shape.

Good, personal income and corporate taxes have never been lower and we're long overdue for a tax hike.

No, bad. The federal government is no where near its smallest size and no one is happy with how they're executing. The last thing we need is to give them more money and power.

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

#224

Post by [deleted] »

mbreese wrote: post #90
skywhopper wrote: post #14

The major critique quoted here comes from David Farber of Carnegie-Mellon, who worries that classifying Internet access under Title II will allow it to be taxed. If that's the worst thing you can think of, we're in good shape.

Internet access could always have been taxed... I'm not sure what in non-Title II classification would have stopped that. Congress can slap a tax on just about anything they'd like. In fact, if you were to believe Comcast, there are already regulatory fees and taxes associated with my internet access (non-TV).

[deleted]

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

#225

Post by alexqgb »

mbreese wrote: post #90
skywhopper wrote: post #14

The major critique quoted here comes from David Farber of Carnegie-Mellon, who worries that classifying Internet access under Title II will allow it to be taxed. If that's the worst thing you can think of, we're in good shape.

Internet access could always have been taxed... I'm not sure what in non-Title II classification would have stopped that. Congress can slap a tax on just about anything they'd like. In fact, if you were to believe Comcast, there are already regulatory fees and taxes associated with my internet access (non-TV).

Spectrum auctions (the costs of which are passed on to the winning telco's customers) are not only a tax, they're a tax that gets marked-up by a private company before being collected.

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

#226

Post by spiritplumber »

pluma wrote: post #41
spiritplumber wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised at how reliable utilities are in America. I was in a low income neighborhood in San Antonio during university, and had maybe 2 blackouts in 3 years.

Where are you from exactly? I live in Europe and 2 blackouts in 3 years would still be an outrage. (To be fair, we have less natural disasters.)

The Italian Alps.

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

#228

Post by gglitch »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #206
minikites wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good, personal income and corporate taxes have never been lower and we're long overdue for a tax hike.

You know you can voluntarily send more money, right? http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/gift/gift.htm I'm sure it's already on your to-do list, of course.

I see this argument a lot but it seems specious to me - though anyone can voluntarily overpay their taxes, the lack of a guarantee that other taxpayers will similarly be contributing more means that my personal overcontribution will be meaningless to everyone but me.

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

#229

Post by greggyb »

kabdib wrote: post #201
greggyb wrote: post #169

To me, net neutrality is pretty much a red herring. I have had good and bad internet service in my life. The least reliable was at my somewhat rural childhood home from TWC. The best is my current connection from that most reviled of companies, Comcast. I have had no service interruptions, and I get a reliable 50Mbps at all times of day (I check regularly with speed tests and checking Torrent activity). The reason my…

Comcast is great on the surface and in the short term; good bandwidth, few outages. The knife-twist comes when they decide to impose data limits with essentially punitive caps designed to quash competition, or dramatically "monetize" your accustomed use of their product. I don't think that making them a utility is a great answer either; this opens the door to taxes that are disconnected from use and politicizing conn…

Again, and not in a "hooray for me, sucks to be you" way, I have options to choose from. These options make it unlikely for Comcast to behave in that manner in my market. If they do, I may easily switch to another provider.

If they are forbidden from rate-limiting me, they still have many dimensions by which to potentially decrease my happiness with their service. If they are my only option and they are forbidden from rate-limiting me, then they are likely to change their behavior in a way I will not be happy about along one of those other axes.

If regulation must occur, then I would prefer to see it happen in a manner that increases rather than decreases my choices. Forbidding a certain pricing strategy does not increase my choices. If regulation must occur, then I'd like to see something along the lines required sale of excess infrastructure capacity. This could happen in terms of utility pole access (the majority of which are not owned by telecoms to my understanding[0]), or through sale of excess bandwidth in an ISP's network.

[0] This is based on my recollection of readings I have done in the past, no current links. The question then becomes if the poles are not owned by ISPs (in general - in some cases they are) then why can entrants to the market not lay their own lines? This would be viable in proportion to the size/density of the market.

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

#230

Post by wtallis »

rhino369 wrote: post #156
lightbritefight wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adding viable competitors is how. Title 2 will make it so other companies have a chance to exist on the government sponsored lines. Once Comcast sees its lifeblood spilling into the streets, Im betting their CS will be as sweet as pecan pie.

Title II can't force Comcast to share their lines. It can only force ILEC's to share their lines. So Verizon, AT&T, CenturyLink, and Frontier could be forced to unbundle. But Comcast can't be.

Can't Comcast be treated as a comparable carrier under section 251(h)(2) and thus also qualify as an ILEC?
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