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FCC Passes Strict Net Neutrality Regulations on 3-2 Vote

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Re: FCC Passes Strict Net Neutrality Regulations on 3-2 Vote

#341

Post by eli »

chetanahuja wrote: post #76

Wow.. This thread has turned into an astro-turfing campaign for the anti-NN advocates. The main gist of the the new regulations is the classify broadband access as a utility under Title II of Communications act. This has long been generally agreed upon by reasonable people as a good thing... and a necessary thing seeing how there's virtually no competition in broadband access for most people in the US. Reading commen…

This sort of comment is a huge pet peeve of mine: you're accusing people who disagree with you of not just being wrong, but being maliciously and intentionally wrong. As if alternate viewpoints can only be explained by a literal conspiracy theory designed to mess with people like you. It's a lazy way to avoid acknowledging that alternate viewpoints even exist, let alone considering whether they have merit.

(But then again, that's just what I would say if I wanted to prolong the conspiracy.)

Re: FCC Passes Strict Net Neutrality Regulations on 3-2 Vote

#342

Post by wwweston »

gojomo wrote: post #318
chetanahuja wrote: post #76

Wow.. This thread has turned into an astro-turfing campaign for the anti-NN advocates. The main gist of the the new regulations is the classify broadband access as a utility under Title II of Communications act. This has long been generally agreed upon by reasonable people as a good thing... and a necessary thing seeing how there's virtually no competition in broadband access for most people in the US. Reading commen…

"virtually no competition"? Title II was designed for phone-line utilities in the 1930s, where there really was a total monopoly: you either got service from your single phone company, or not at all. For broadband, most Americans had not one but zero options 20 years ago. Now, most have 2 or more wired options (cable and DSL), and 3 or more cellular-wireless options. Some have extra fiber, cable, or DSL options. Some…

> Now, most have 2 or more wired options (cable and DSL), and 3 or more cellular-wireless options.

If this is the counterargument to the idea that we have a captured market and should regulate it like one, then it's essentially a concession: wireless is a non-starter because of inherent limits, and saying "oh, there's always one alternative" isn't exactly describing a vibrant competitive market in the land of tethered connections.

But the thing is, that's pretty much a red herring. The net neutrality debate isn't about competition among carriers at all. It's about competition between people offering services over the network, and most specifically whether those offering/receiving those services have to pay by source/destination.

It's arguable that the new rules address more than that, but if the carriers didn't want us to land here, maybe they shouldn't have fired the first shot by threatening the neutral model.

Re: FCC Passes Strict Net Neutrality Regulations on 3-2 Vote

#343

Post by droopybuns »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #321
droopybuns wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LTE direct allows peer to peer routing of traffic over high capacity, licensed spectrum. In rural areas where a device has shoddy coverage, you could conceivably route traffic from devices with poor coverage to devices with strong coverage and then out to the Internet. You wouldn't want to do this for streaming traffic, as it could negatively impact the experience of the device with the strongest coverage. But you co…

The thing is, "net neutrality" arguments are not really about peering agreements. They are a consequence of a deeper, unfortunate reality: anyone who uses a packet-switched network to emulate a circuit-switched one is in a state of sin. Streaming applications like to pretend that they have a dedicated circuit connection to their peer, whether that peer is a centralized service like Netflix (or their CDN provider), or…

I conceptually agree with the problems you're describing.

I have absolutely no faith that the government is capable of responsibly managing this ecosystem.

Let the nerds work. Do not bring regulators in whenever architectural decisions need to be made.

Re: FCC Passes Strict Net Neutrality Regulations on 3-2 Vote

#344

Post by anigbrowl »

paulhauggis wrote: post #132
chetanahuja wrote: post #76

Wow.. This thread has turned into an astro-turfing campaign for the anti-NN advocates. The main gist of the the new regulations is the classify broadband access as a utility under Title II of Communications act. This has long been generally agreed upon by reasonable people as a good thing... and a necessary thing seeing how there's virtually no competition in broadband access for most people in the US. Reading commen…

"This thread has turned into an astro-turfing campaign for the anti-NN advocates" It's disingenuous to call an opposing opinion "astro-turfing" in an attempt to discredit them. There are 700 total rules to the regulation. We haven't been able to see one of them. This doesn't concern you in any way? "and a necessary thing seeing how there's virtually no competition in broadband access for most people in the US." Tell…

It's disingenuous to call an opposing opinion "astro-turfing" in an attempt to discredit them. There are 700 total rules to the regulation. We haven't been able to see one of them. This doesn't concern you in any way?

No, because this is the norm - the commissioners draw up a proposal, vote on it, then it's published in the Federal Register as a 'notice of proposed rulemaking,' witht he text of the proposed rule in full, and there is a comment period. Following that, the FCC publishes a 'notice of adoption of final rule,' which may or may not include changes based on the submitted comments. the process is summarized here: http://www.fcc.gov/rulemaking

Most people were afraid to talk about it because the HN community typically down votes everyone to hell that has opposing opinions.

Spare us the ad hominem attacks. Substantive arguments generally do just fine on HN. Rayiner, for example, has been making substantie arguments against the idea of Title II classification for months and it hasn't done his standing any harm whatsoever.

What happened to open and honest discussions?

It's not honest to pretend that this rulemaking process is somehow different and worse from the normal one that has been in place for years.

Re: FCC Passes Strict Net Neutrality Regulations on 3-2 Vote

#346

Post by nknighthb »

neuromancer2701 wrote: post #289
wpietri wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is quite literally almost no competition in US broadband access. See the graph here: http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/09/most-of-the-us-has-n... To have a robust market, you need a variety of players. Witha duopoly, you generally end up with approximately the same service as a monopoly, but with two slightly different price points. But the fast majority of the US has at best 2 choices even for a 4 Mbps plan…

So the better question is how did we get to this duopoly?

By making it public infrastructure.

Remember, if not for an accident of history (cable and telephone services running over completely different kinds of wires), it wouldn't be a duopoly, it would be an outright natural monopoly -- a prime candidate for treatment as a public utility.

Re: FCC Passes Strict Net Neutrality Regulations on 3-2 Vote

#347

Post by MereInterest »

droopybuns wrote: post #277
daughart wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At what point does "prioritization" effectively become blocking? People navigate away from websites that take a long time to load or have advertisements.

Is your use of the Internet limited to websites? If you play video games, use realtime video services like facetime, or use a VPN for mission critical work, do you really want your traffic flows to be identical to something that delivers content to a rendering engine? Different traffic has different requirements & performance characteristics. From a pure engineering perspective, this is a very poor decision and treat…

Different types of content have different requirements. Different content within the same type does not. This is not an issue of prioritizing VoIP over a large single file. This is an argument against prioritizing Company A's VoIP over Company B's VoIP.

Re: FCC Passes Strict Net Neutrality Regulations on 3-2 Vote

#348

Post by morsch »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #254
api wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is America, where infrastructure is communism. I mean if we provide good infrastructure, pretty soon we'll be sending people to gulags or something like they do in Europe and Canada.

I'm an European and it's the first time I hear about us being sent to gulags for making infrastructure that actually works . BTW. In Poland, infrastructure was all fine until they started to privatize it. Now our trains barely work, and public transport companies like to compete with each other by showing which one sucks at doing their job more...

Relax -- the grandparent was being facetious.

Re: FCC Passes Strict Net Neutrality Regulations on 3-2 Vote

#349

Post by throwaway150219 »

rayiner wrote: post #314
r00fus wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As soon as it was deregulated, Verizon and AT&T began upgrades. But before then, they weren't going to build upgrades to networks that any competitor could borrow at wholesale value. Given the great intentions that such bastions of corporate ethics like AT&T and Verizon have, is it possible that they simple held out until the got what they wanted?

What exactly is "unethical" about not investing tons of money in something that isn't going to yield the kind of profit your investors want? People act like Verizon and AT&T have a moral obligation to spend money on telecom infrastructure as a public good at minimal price above cost.

Well, investing tons of money in lobbyists to pass state laws to prevent the deployment of municipal broadband utilizing public tax monies and breaks, is considered unethical (at least to me).

So, not investing in infrastructure is not the problem, but preventing others from doing so, is scummy.

They do not want to invest AND they don't want to compete.

Re: FCC Passes Strict Net Neutrality Regulations on 3-2 Vote

#350

Post by jessaustin »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #254
api wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is America, where infrastructure is communism. I mean if we provide good infrastructure, pretty soon we'll be sending people to gulags or something like they do in Europe and Canada.

I'm an European and it's the first time I hear about us being sent to gulags for making infrastructure that actually works . BTW. In Poland, infrastructure was all fine until they started to privatize it. Now our trains barely work, and public transport companies like to compete with each other by showing which one sucks at doing their job more...

Ummm, I thought Europeans were supposed to be better than us poor simple Americans at dry wit and irony?

It sounds as if you might want to reinstate your previous system.

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