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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

#391

Post by greggyb »

pbz wrote: post #327
greggyb wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do absolutely agree with you that ISPs are in a poor state in the majority of the US. I think a lot can be done to improve it. I disagree strongly that net neutrality is the most important or most effective lever to push on. As I have made clear, and as I think is fairly obvious to anyone who has moved between various ISP markets in this country, I believe that the quality of internet service is positively correlat…

I'm not arguing for less competition, far from it. If anything, the lack of competition is probably the main cause of the current situation. However, net neutrality is the bare minimum. We should also advocate for more competition, just not at the expense of neutrality. Imagine we would let a grocery store lax the quality control on their products. They could sell more for cheaper, but the number of people who would…

I think we'll just have to disagree on the actual import of rate-limiting. I do agree that competition is very important.

What I'll leave it with is this: prohibiting rate-limiting at best does nothing to increase competition among ISPs (I have not seen any arguments against this), whereas rate-limiting behavior is something I've never seen in a market with multiple viable ISP choices (by which I mean that dialup and satellite are not close enough to broadband to count). As I started this entire thread with, rate-limiting seems like a red herring.

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

#392

Post by bpodgursky »

Probably way too late to get noticed here, but while I think the THREAT of Title II might be useful to keep ISPs in line, it would be a pretty rash move to actually reclassify broadband.

The US has painfully little competition in most areas, there is no debate about that. But new technology has been fixing that, albeit slowly, via increasingly expansive and competitive 4G, Satellite, and even improvements in moving data across copper wires or existing phone lines (not going to get you 100mb service, but quite plausibly "good enough" that you can realistically threaten Comcast with quitting service.)

I don't want to get in a libertarian vs flame war, but the fact is, it is far easier to regulate than deregulate when it becomes unnecessary. If the non-competitive market we have now is an artifact of old technology and installation costs, it would be a mistake to set up a regulatory infastructure we won't be able to roll back.

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

#393

Post by rayiner »

tomphoolery wrote: post #321
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…

"Politicians must think the tech community is a frustrating beast to work with." Smart people are less predictable than those they have been marketing to previously. The biggest downside to this decision comes from the following line: "But Tom Wheeler, the F.C.C. chairman, will advocate a light-touch approach to Title II, they say, shunning the more intrusive aspects of utility-style regulation, like meddling in pric…

> To me, this is proof they are still in bed with the ISPs (which is not surprising)

"Light-touch" is a buzzword at the FCC. It refers to not killing investment into the market with FDR-style regulation. There's very few economists who would come to the defense of government price controls.

> Over-the-top linear broadcasting via the internet has been possible, at least technically, for a long time now. And we have the bandwidth in this country to pull it off. The roadblock are the major cable companies who are making far too much money in their complete dominative ownership of the infrastructure to deliver video (currently), as they do not want to lose that business.

The cable companies certainly do not want to lose the video business, and it would be disastrous for everyone if they did. If you look at these companies' SEC filings, video service is what justifies building the pipes in the first place. E.g. Charter, the largest "pure cable company" runs a loss, but without video service it'd be losing $1 billion a year.[1] See also this analysis of Verizon's FiOS build-out: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/19/a-bear-speaks-why-v... (concluding that VZN won't make up their investment for any type of customer, but triple-play customers will come closest).

[1] Page 40, 42 of their 10-K: http://phx.corporate-ir.net/External.File?item=UGFyZW50SUQ9N.... Getting rid of video would cut $2 billion of programming costs but $4 billion of revenues.

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

#394

Post by dd36 »

MCRed wrote: post #355
shmerl wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who would want to be negative about it except monopolists' shills who are paid to do it?

People who recognize that the internet has been a free market for most of its existence, and has consequently resulted in a massive economic boom. Without which, by the way, there would not be the startup culture we have now. (prior to the internet it was all semiconductors.) YC people here are advocating literally killing the goose that laid the golden egg. Do I sound like a shill for comcast? If so, you're not real…

We had de facto net neutrality until Verizon successfully gutted it a year ago. The FCC is trying to maintain the free market that has existed. Verizon is trying to turn the internet into cable TV.

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

#395

Post by acdha »

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…

It shows how effective the huge marketing push has been: not just the ads which are showing up everywhere but the concern-troll op-eds and faux-libertarian blog posts sprouting up all over the place from ideologically-negotiable writers who are coincidentally all suddenly very concerned about the possibility of prices going up and lauding the hyper-competitive free market we currently enjoy.

A lot of tech people think they're too smart to fall for propaganda but there are other people making a lot of money proving you just have to find the right spin.

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

#396

Post by dd36 »

WillPostForFood wrote: post #382
lomnakkus wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You are right, there is no competition without choice. That has nothing to do with net neutrality. Well, except it does. It has everything to do with NN. If you can't choose your ISP unless said ISP has agreements with, oh I don't know, the WB or Netflix or HBO (or whatever) then the competition has been stifled, or in terms your sponsors might understand better: freedoms have been curtailed . So, in short: Stop tr…

Choice means more providers to choose from. Net neutrality is about the content on the wire. If it reduces congestion between Netflix and Comcast, great. But it still means people choose between slow DSL and expensive Cable. What will help is a third, fourth, and fifth options, and this doesn't help. You don't need to be angry about it, no one is astroturfing, and no one spat on your mom. - grab a cold danish beer an…

Why do you want to turn the internet into cable TV?

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

#397

Post by JoeAltmaier »

adventured wrote: post #305
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Right, and that's another way in which bandwidth, storage and processing power as resources have absolutely nothing in common with water or electricity. The ability to waste exponentially greater amounts each generation. Do I need to watch a late night talk show at 1080 on YouTube instead of 720? No, it has only modest impact on my experience, but I do it anyway because there's no cost associated to doing so. I can f…

I'm not sure its meaningful to even talk about 'wasting bandwidth'. The cable is doing something all the time - whether or not your meaningful bits are travelling over the wire. So its imaginary to say 'now the cable is in use' and 'now the cable is being wasted' - its only a different state to a human mind, not to the universe.

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

#398

Post by thoughtpolice »

fpgeek wrote: post #383
MCRed wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who recognize that the internet has been a free market for most of its existence, and has consequently resulted in a massive economic boom. Without which, by the way, there would not be the startup culture we have now. (prior to the internet it was all semiconductors.) YC people here are advocating literally killing the goose that laid the golden egg. Do I sound like a shill for comcast? If so, you're not real…

> People who recognize that the internet has been a free market for most of its existence Really? ARPANET and NSFNET were big free market bastions, were they?

LOL, it's even better than that, AFAIK. ARPANET was a (D)ARPA project that to my knowledge was started to have computers start interoperating with each other so researchers at universities could easily and generally transfer data and information with each other, e.g. research papers.

You may have noticed the 'start' bit. The reason it was 'starting' is because prior to that, corporations did NOT want you to have computers that could talk to each other. That would weaken their grip on the market and ability to lock you in; when no computers can talk to each other, and your business depends on computers from Corp X, this is good for them: you can't go to anyone else. Printers, sockets, none of these are interoperable - you rely on them for everything.

As far as I understand, this is exactly what companies like GE did in those days. ARPANET was completely against everything they wanted, because it meant consumers were freed from their lock in. You could mix and match computers (perhaps cheaper, not-GE ones) with your GE machines, and you weren't beholden to their whims (oh, you need a better mainframe? Gotta upgrade all your machines so they can talk to each other!) And it's unlikely the 'free market' would have ever bore out the same result, and if it did, it probably would have only happened decades later.

Of course, good luck explaining this shit to a libertarian-infested hellhole like HN: they all believe they're on the cusp of Gettin' Big Bucks, so they don't want a market that allows competition, or a government that regulates anything they do. They want one that allows them to strangle competition with no repercussions or limits - they're just about to make it big after all as Uber Millionaires, and why do you want to steal their money!???!!

Like said elsewhere, Americans believe themselves to be impovershed millionaires, so they don't want to limit their future greatness. And of course, to build on what Carlin said: this is a part of the 'American Dream' because you have to be asleep (or braindead) to believe in it.

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

#399

Post by imjustsaying »

thoughtpolice wrote: post #398
fpgeek wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People who recognize that the internet has been a free market for most of its existence Really? ARPANET and NSFNET were big free market bastions, were they?

LOL, it's even better than that, AFAIK. ARPANET was a (D)ARPA project that to my knowledge was started to have computers start interoperating with each other so researchers at universities could easily and generally transfer data and information with each other, e.g. research papers. You may have noticed the 'start' bit. The reason it was 'starting' is because prior to that, corporations did NOT want you to have comp…

The government is a player in the free market.

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

#400

Post by mattmcknight »

dublinben wrote: post #116
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…

>monopolies are given out to the existing players Why would you think this? >a crappy connection forever Or this? Just last week, the FCC raised its definition of broadband, against the complaints of incumbent ISPs.

This is how it works for electric power.
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