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Net Neutrality to Get U.S. Senate Vote as Democrats Force Issue

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Re: Net Neutrality to Get U.S. Senate Vote as Democrats Force Issue

#41

Post by sumedh »

awalton wrote: post #33
JoshuaEN wrote: post #4

This vote seems like the best chance of maintaining NN at the national level. Congress ultimately directly serve at the pleasure of their constituents, unlike the FCC commissioners. Point being, the time leading up to this vote is probably be the best time to let your congress members know your opinion on NN. Do not let the "failure"[1] of previous efforts to get congress to act in defense of NN dissuade you from fut…

> This vote seems like the best chance of maintaining NN at the national level. Shame, because this vote is incredibly predictable by anyone who has been paying any attention at all. Republicans are on the bullet train to dismantle and sell off the government to the highest bidders. This vote goes straight down party lines. But, it'll be an easy banner for Dems to hoist in November to rally voters, since it's categor…

> since it's categorical that Americans do not want this madness

As an outsider it is kind of amusing when I see lines like "Americans do not want" said by both Democrats and Republicans.

Re: Net Neutrality to Get U.S. Senate Vote as Democrats Force Issue

#42

Post by danjayh »

lmroz wrote: post #37

The U.S. Senate voted on an older version of net neutrality in 2011 with a resolution introduced by former republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (a resolution of disapproval of the FCC's Open Internet Order of 2010). It was a party line vote, 48-52, with republicans (the minority caucus in the Senate at that time) voting against the order and democrats voting in support of the order. https://www.congress.gov/bill/112t…

The problem isn't net neutrality, it's lack of competition among ISPs. Normally, I would agree with them - regulating the internet is not the way to spur innovation. But with an ISP monopoly or duopoly in most markets, either more competition (my preferred solution) or regulation is needed. As we've seen with phone service (if you're old enough to remember), regulation will give us reliable but expensive service, and competition will give us cheap, reliable, and feature-filled service.

Re: Net Neutrality to Get U.S. Senate Vote as Democrats Force Issue

#43

Post by lmroz »

taurath wrote: post #40
lmroz wrote: post #37

The U.S. Senate voted on an older version of net neutrality in 2011 with a resolution introduced by former republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (a resolution of disapproval of the FCC's Open Internet Order of 2010). It was a party line vote, 48-52, with republicans (the minority caucus in the Senate at that time) voting against the order and democrats voting in support of the order. https://www.congress.gov/bill/112t…

So put another way, whichever party in power is against net neutrality, and whichever isn’t is for it?

No - republicans in both chambers voted against net neutrality, and democrats in both chambers voted for net neutrality. The resolution of disapproval of net neutrality only passed in the House because there was a republican majority in the House at that time. It failed in the Senate because there was a democrat majority in the Senate at that time.

Re: Net Neutrality to Get U.S. Senate Vote as Democrats Force Issue

#44

Post by smsm42 »

tfigment wrote: post #14
anfedorov wrote: post #10

What's a good resource for understanding broadband markets as a whole? At least in SF in the past 5 years, Comcast seems to have upgraded 100Mbps connections to 1Gbps connections. Not sure whether that translates to a bigger shared pipe for the city as a whole, but it certainly looks like a good amount of improvement in $:bits, at least in comparison with $:sqFt.

Its an improvement but Comcast has been delaying real improvements for years but collect insane profits (afaik). I would love to see the numbers as well. The X1 DVR as far as I am concerned was horrible compared to the ReplayTV or Tivo circa 2001 (except for obviously HD improvement). It only took 15 years and lots of legislation mandating cablecards and whatnot to get them to get there. I don't have hope that they w…

Comcast profit margin is 12%: https://ycharts.com/companies/CMCSA/profit_margin That's on the high side, usually it's around 10%. For comparison, profit margins for Internet/IT companies are around 25%, Google's 24%. Facebook's a whopping 45%. Microsoft's a remarkable 26%.

Is 12% "insane"? Which one would be the "sane" one?

Re: Net Neutrality to Get U.S. Senate Vote as Democrats Force Issue

#46

Post by harikb »

chrischen wrote: post #18
pfooti wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd bet that at least part of that is in response to competition on the ground. Monkeybrains and Sonic (disclosure: long time sonic customer) both are bringing high-speed broadband to SF. In particular, I have symmetric gigabit for like $50 a month.

I have 15 down 0.5 mbps up sonic for $70...

There are areas where Sonic is dependent on ATT for service. Sure, it is not a great solution, but they (sonic) at least answer calls, have a decent portal, and not trying to upsell you anything or steal your dns queries.

Re: Net Neutrality to Get U.S. Senate Vote as Democrats Force Issue

#47

Post by behringer »

danjayh wrote: post #42
lmroz wrote: post #37

The U.S. Senate voted on an older version of net neutrality in 2011 with a resolution introduced by former republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (a resolution of disapproval of the FCC's Open Internet Order of 2010). It was a party line vote, 48-52, with republicans (the minority caucus in the Senate at that time) voting against the order and democrats voting in support of the order. https://www.congress.gov/bill/112t…

The problem isn't net neutrality, it's lack of competition among ISPs. Normally, I would agree with them - regulating the internet is not the way to spur innovation. But with an ISP monopoly or duopoly in most markets, either more competition (my preferred solution) or regulation is needed. As we've seen with phone service (if you're old enough to remember), regulation will give us reliable but expensive service, and…

Net Neutrality and competition are two completely separate issues.

Re: Net Neutrality to Get U.S. Senate Vote as Democrats Force Issue

#48

Post by awalton »

sumedh wrote: post #41
awalton wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This vote seems like the best chance of maintaining NN at the national level. Shame, because this vote is incredibly predictable by anyone who has been paying any attention at all. Republicans are on the bullet train to dismantle and sell off the government to the highest bidders. This vote goes straight down party lines. But, it'll be an easy banner for Dems to hoist in November to rally voters, since it's categor…

> since it's categorical that Americans do not want this madness As an outsider it is kind of amusing when I see lines like "Americans do not want" said by both Democrats and Republicans.

Luckily in this case I can point to the data the FCC collected themselves. After it's been denoised/despammed, it's almost unitary that legitimate comments supported net neutrality.

Of course, the FCC was very quick to completely dismiss the entire data set, and didn't even refer to it in their final decision because it was so filled with bots spamming the list with identical submissions from dead people and even apparently Barack Obama - the very person who asked the FCC to take the strong stance in the first place. But, who would have expected any different from a government this steeped in corruption and controversy.

It's okay though. You're an outsider. You can easily miss the nuance of this conversation as it's played out on Hacker News literally every single working day.

Re: Net Neutrality to Get U.S. Senate Vote as Democrats Force Issue

#49

Post by rosser »

quadyeast wrote: post #29
chrischen wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have 15 down 0.5 mbps up sonic for $70...

I have 3 mb/s down sonic for $68. It comes bundled with a phone line that I do not need. They charge me $10 extra because they are trying to improve the network elsewhere.

I'm paying Sonic ~$100 for 12 down/2 up bonded DSL, and two phone lines I think I've used one of, about twice.

I'd still rather give them that money than Comcast any.

Re: Net Neutrality to Get U.S. Senate Vote as Democrats Force Issue

#50

Post by Steltek »

renlo wrote: post #39
awalton wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This vote seems like the best chance of maintaining NN at the national level. Shame, because this vote is incredibly predictable by anyone who has been paying any attention at all. Republicans are on the bullet train to dismantle and sell off the government to the highest bidders. This vote goes straight down party lines. But, it'll be an easy banner for Dems to hoist in November to rally voters, since it's categor…

I thought that was the point the article was positing; it's a symbolic vote to get Republicans on the record for their support of an unpopular position.

I think what people fail to realize is that it's not unpopular enough and not with the right people. For the GOP base, they may disagree wholeheartedly but what are they going to do? Vote for a abortionist gun-grabbing Democrat?

For Dems, the best use of these things is barrage the election cycle with negative news about the GOP. Failed policies, bad ideas, myopic leadership. Bad bad bad bad. Suck the energy right out the way the Clinton investigation did in 2016.

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