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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

#131

Post by sbov »

amputect wrote: post #52
supergeek133 wrote: post #4

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)? That's where this is headed.

My tap water is clean and delicious and I have never, ever had a problem with it. I have never experienced an unscheduled service interruption with my water, and scheduled service interruptions are very rare and advertised well in advance. My electricity is stable and reliable, and any power outages I've experienced have been brief, and exclusively due to exceptional weather events. I'm also a Comcast customer, and I…

I had 3 great years of internet in San Francisco with Comcast. It basically was like those utilities: it was always there, around the promised speeds, with 0 outages that I noticed. Considering I work from home, and do all my codework over ssh, I could tell if there was a slowdown for even a few seconds.

Then at year 4, for whatever reason, it started to have issues. At least once per month.

How I miss those 3 blissful years when it Just Worked.

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

#132

Post by skylan_q »

0xdeadbeefbabe wrote: post #123
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.

Well they regulate radio. [Edit] Just check out the innovations in radio?

Well they regulate radio.

I agree, they regulate a bunch of stuff. I suppose that's a carte blanche to regulate anything it sees itself fit to regulate?

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

#133

Post by dublinben »

ancap wrote: post #112
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #32

As a libertarian who knows tech, I'm on the government's side here, although I'm grimacing while I'm supporting them. It's simply the lesser of two evils. One thing to help clarify the debate if you're talking to somebody who opposes this move: do not confuse the issue of how the government should be treating utilities in general with whether or not the internet is a utility. We can have a grand old time debating the…

>As a libertarian who knows tech, I'm on the government's side here That's an oxymoron. The core reason internet service sucks for the vast majority of Americans is because state and local governments grant monopoly status to the ISP cartels. This move by the FCC does nothing to remedy that and consequently will not solve the problem. If they require higher "standard" of internet without doing away with the monopolie…

There are no government granted ISP monopolies.

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

#134

Post by amputect »

cheald wrote: post #91
amputect wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My tap water is clean and delicious and I have never, ever had a problem with it. I have never experienced an unscheduled service interruption with my water, and scheduled service interruptions are very rare and advertised well in advance. My electricity is stable and reliable, and any power outages I've experienced have been brief, and exclusively due to exceptional weather events. I'm also a Comcast customer, and I…

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?

I agree that it's a silly comparison; you should take that up with the post I replied to, which explicitly mentioned water and power and seemed to imply that my internet service would degrade to the same quality as those utilities (if only!)

When I had a landline telephone, I was completely happy with it. It was inexpensive and reliable, and if I was unsatisfied with my service I could choose from several other providers. I could use my own equipment with it, all of the consumer electronics were interoperable with any service provider, and I never had an outage (to my knowledge; I didn't get a lot of phone calls). I had a wide variety of options for dialup internet at the time, either through my phone provider or other competing providers. This was in a small town in northern Idaho, too, and it wasn't exactly known as a telecommunications hub or city of industry.

I am unhappy with my cable TV service, which is provided by the same company as my cable internet service. My cable provider is the only one in my area, and has no incentive to do anything other than take slightly more of my money every year in exchange for performing zero upgrades or service improvements.

This is just a single data point, but only one of the two companies I mention above is subject to Title II regulation currently, and it's coincidentally the one that I had a good experience with.

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

#135

Post by briandear »

dkhenry wrote: post #94

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 talking land lines here. Same with water. There aren't any water companies competing based on the fact that they provide Evian on tap. Even if you wanted to pay the price to have Evian on tap, it will never happen; water is water in terms of a utility. Making the Internet a utility will destroy competition because it commoditizes it.

I know that some percentage of the HN community seems to love government regulation and feels that capitalism is somehow evil, but te government has a long track record of being highly inefficient and mostly immune to market forces. If you don't like the drivers license office service, too bad, it's the only game in town; there's no incentive to improve it. I find it ironic that despite the Libertarian leanings of many of us here, there's some desire to implement more regulation, more restrictions and less competition. How does less competition improve anything? Without incentives, the market-driven pressure to make it faster and cheaper disappears.

I think there's a fundamental misunderstanding of the consequences of regulating the Internet and presumably taxing it like a utility. There are significant unintended consequences.

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

#136

Post by ForHackernews »

supergeek133 wrote: post #4

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)? That's where this is headed.

> is anyone 100% happy with their utility (power, water, etc)?

Yes, absolutely. My water is clean, potable and available with at least 99.99% uptime. Same goes for electricity, which is only slightly less reliable (down for a few hours in a major blizzard several years ago)

If my electricity were slightly cheaper, that'd be nice, but it's still less than half my cable/internet bill. Power is already deregulated here, so if I really cared, I could shop around for a cheaper rate, or for electricity generated from renewable sources.

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

#137

Post by skuhn »

lightbritefight wrote: post #115
djrogers wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait a second, every single negative you've described here can also be applied to other utilities who have been regulated under title II for as long as it's existed. They've yet to find a way to 'regulate' human decency and good customer service...

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 regulation will not necessarily open up the copper wiring to your house to competitors. The FCC is expected to forebear a lot of the Title II rules, and that may well be one of them.

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

#138

Post by drawkbox »

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.

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 utilities then so is broadband and wired.

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

#139

Post by ForHackernews »

cranklin wrote: post #48
HelloMcFly wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not 100% happy with my utility companies, but I'm 500% more satisfied with them than any cable company I've ever had.

I can dump my cable company if they piss me off. I can't do that with my utility companies

In many parts of America, electricity is partially deregulated and you can switch providers.

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

#140

Post by glesica »

skylan_q wrote: post #104
dkhenry wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The power to tax is the power to destroy.

I don't understand how people can disagree with this. He's perfectly correct. How often does one cite the price of cigarettes to quit smoking them?

That's nonsensical. It all depends on the utility of the smoker. Cigarette taxes are, in theory at least, Pigouvian taxes in the sense that the goal is to reduce the harm caused by smoking. They accomplish this in two ways, first, by providing funds to deal with the associated medical costs and two, by reducing the number of people who choose to smoke.

Whether you agree with the assessed level of negative externalities or not (I don't, actually), the tax hasn't "destroyed" anything. Smoking still exists. Fewer people get sufficient utility from smoking to go on doing so, but that's the point of the tax in this case. Too many people were smoking previously due to market inefficiencies. Now the "correct" (again, I believe the externalities were lower than many people believe they were) number of people are smoking.

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