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

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

#291

Post by mdesq »

poor_too_ wrote: post #177
IanDrake wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

USPO is a first class mail monopoly because other players choose not to get in that game. Instead, even when you do ship via another carrier if that carrier deems your route to be too unprofitable they will give it to the post office because they cannot refuse. In fact, FedEx and UPS are the post office's biggest customers for this very reason.

Not true. It's impossible to truly compete at First Class Mail. The USPO(USPS) is a de-facto First Class mail monopoly because of the Private Express Statutes.

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

#292

Post by defineclean »

AlexandrB wrote: post #248
defineclean wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My tap water is clean Define "clean". It may be sanitary but most tap water in the US tastes (and smells) like swimming pool and has tons of other trace amounts of harmful substances in it like benzene, pesticides, styrene, trichloroethylene, pharmaceuticals, etc: http://water.epa.gov/drink/contaminants/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drinking_water_quality_in_the_... If you want "clean" water you need water from an…

What the heck are you talking about? Those two links seem to contradict your point that tap water isn't "clean" since they point out that it is, in fact, very clean. I come from a country where that is not the case and water had to be boiled before you could consume it. Oh yeah, and it wasn't fluoridated so I had multiple teeth rot away before I was 10 years old (luckily I moved to Canada before most of my adult teet…

>Those two links seem to contradict your point that tap water isn't "clean" since they point out that it is, in fact, very clean.

If you actually read the links you would see that "clean" is simply defined by the EPA as "what we allow by law". And that there are many chemicals known to be harmful to humans that aren't regulated or monitored at all... not to mention the fact that tap water in many towns and cities across the US regularly has chemical levels that exceed the EPA's defined limits (and many scientists argue that these limits are too high as it is).

Here's another link: http://www.nrdc.org/water/drinking/uscities.asp

>I'm also really curious where you get your water since most bottled water comes from "municipal sources" (i.e. it's tap water).

There are several dispensers in my area that provide reverse osmosis (plus carbon) filtered water (water source is usually local tap water) and it costs about 25 cents a gallon or a dollar for 5 gallons. Most Walmarts have one, back by the beverage section.

It's also pretty easy to find inexpensive bottled water that's RO filtered, you just need to look on the bottle and it'll tell you where the water is from and how it is processed/filtered, if at all.

>Oh yeah, and it wasn't fluoridated so I had multiple teeth rot away before I was 10 years old (luckily I moved to Canada before most of my adult teeth really started growing).

Correlation does not equal causation.

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

#293

Post by MCRed »

lomnakkus wrote: post #287
MCRed wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are there only one or two ISPs in your area? Because of regulation. Cable companies are government granted monopoly. The reason you don't have cable choice is that monopoly. Local phone service, similar thing, though regulations have opened up long distance access, only one company has the infrastructure. Wireless Broadband, similar thing, artificial scarcity created by regulation (spread spectrum would support h…

Stop spewing bullshit. I don't even live in the US. I have lots of choice. EDIT: Btw, love how two commenters pounced on my post immeditaely even though we're in a 280+ comment thread. How's that astroturfing going for you?

We're talking about the US government regulating a US industry. You say you live outside the USA and you have lots of choice and therefore what I say is "bullshit"? Really? That's your only attempt at an argument? Especially after you talk about your one or two possibly colluding providers?

I think it's unfortunate that anti-intellectualiosm has become so prevalent that you feel comfortable with a post that consists of nothing more than the word "bullshit" and an assertion that I must be astroturfing. Labeling the argument without a counter argument and then labelling me.

Can't you do better?

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

#294

Post by JoeAltmaier »

adventured wrote: post #290
jchendy wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't network usage also finite? I.e. wouldn't there be issues if every device connected to an ISP simultaneously tried to stream large data?

There's a clear difference between these resources. If you could use 100 times more electricity and water at the same cost (with no damage to the environment), would you? We might find uses for doing that, if those resources weren't relatively scarce. If you give an average consumer a 10tb hard drive, will they use it all? Probably not even close. The amount of storage wasted by consumers is beyond epic, thrown away…

The waste is less, if you weight storage by performance or energy efficiency. Then, we're throwing away low-yield storage and replacing it with high-octane storage. The 'waste factor' becomes small.

Also consider most discarded storage is a fraction of the size of what it is replaced by. So the fraction of waste is always small (compared to its absolute value).

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

#295

Post by c22 »

briandear wrote: post #162
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…

How are your download speeds over that landline phone? There's a difference between meeting a minimal level of service and actually delivering innovation, such as speed increases. How do you like your high definition phone calls? You don't have that yet? Crazy. I would thought the phone company would be trying to rush that out the door so as to be more competitive against all of the phone company competition out ther…

I have never been on a phone call that felt more "high definition" than two landlines connected together unmediated by any voip or cellular link.

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

#296

Post by NoPiece »

alchemism wrote: post #189
IanDrake wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

That's playing semantic games though. If someone wants broadband at their house and the only possible provider is Comcast, then to them it may as well be called a monopoly.

It is also playing with semantics to exclude DSL from the definition of broadband. 99% of people served by Comcast are also going to have a telco that can provide an admittedly slower, but still broadband, connection via DSL.

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

#297

Post by Terr_ »

pavanky wrote: post #108
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.

Bytes are bytes.

Not disagreeing with the basic idea, but there's also latency and peak throughput.

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

#298

Post by rayiner »

MCRed wrote: post #289
jkn wrote: post #221

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]. Quot…

Bottom line is that net neutrality comes out of the desire for people to be able to access any site they want without penalties due to traffic shaping or other shenanigans. The reason they are concerned is that the cable companies and to a lesser extent wireless and DSL companies are doing this. And why do they have the power to do this? Why don't people just vote with their feet and switch to a competitor? Because t…

> Every cable company in every city I've lived in the USA has been a locally granted monopoly with the city extracting massive amounts of money from the monthly cable bill in "Franchise" fees.

In no city is the cable company actually a "locally granted monopoly." Every franchise agreement I've seen points out that it's non-exclusive.

Technologists have a fundamental misconception that leads to a lot of cognitive dissonance and confused reasoning: that building wireline infrastructure is a lucrative business that companies can't wait to get into, and would were it not for "regulatory capture" and legal roadblocks. But it's not. It's a business with large up-front costs, expensive maintenance costs, expensive unionized workforces, etc.

> Every wireless carrier is a monopoly-- because they all have monopoly powers over bands of spectrum the federal government sold to them

You're punning on the word "monopoly." Anyone who owns property has a "monopoly" over it. But that does not make them a monopoly. In most cities, you have 3-4 options for wireless service.

> Another utility that is highly regulated, engages in rent seeking and is, a monopoly over its area.

Most electric utilities are monopolies, because it's illegal to deploy competing electrical service.

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

#299

Post by MCRed »

gglitch wrote: post #228
CamperBob2 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Right, the advocates for increased taxation don't want to pay more themselves-- they could do that now-- they want the other guy to pay more.

How they think this won't make them poorer as well shows they aren't really thinking it thru.

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

#300

Post by unprepare »

emcrazyone wrote: post #148
emcrazyone wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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.

I've dealt extensivley with at least 7 ISPs in the US, and not a single one would even consider helping even a business customer troubleshoot their own equipment.

If you are supporting peoples privately owned equipment you are going WAY above and beyond what any service provider i have dealt with in the US is willing to do.

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