6 ms·

The FCC puts broadband under political control

18 points by miked 16y ago

aditya 16y ago
For the past decade, broadband has been classified as an "information service" and thus more lightly regulated than traditional telephone services. This has led to an explosion of new investment and Web innovation I'm sorry - but, what?! There's been innovation on the web because the telecom industry was deregulated?! All I can see is that the current telcos have no incentive to innovate in any way, and are gouging consumers as much as they can while the US lags behind the rest of the world in broadband speed and availability! What this is, is a thinly veiled attempt at trying to blame the left-leaning administration for an evil communist plot - while all it's trying to do is force telcos to catch up with the rest of the world...
- yummyfajitas 16y ago
  It's a relative comparison. Compare the gains in internet to the gains in plain old telephone service. Incidentally, much of the rest of the world has less regulation than us. In Korea, for example, you have competition between multiple internet providers (i.e., more than just Verizon and Cable). In the US, such competition is illegal.
  - hga 16y ago
    De facto illegal. In theory other companies can run wires or fiber, and most certainly they can and many do it with radio, it's just that the legal monopoly incumbents have too many advantages. Plus backhaul is very expensive in lots of places.
    - tbrownaw 16y ago
      > In theory other companies can run wires or fiber, and most certainly they can and many do it with radio I thought there tended to be monopolies on wires/fiber granted by local governments (supposedly to limit the number of companies tearing up roads and the like to install new infrastructure, but more likely to create a scarce privilege they can sell)? Radio tends to be much lower bandwidth, and can be susceptible to bad weather.
      - hga 16y ago
        In theory I think you can go to Federal court and get these overturned, but I could of course be wrong. We're not likely to find out since the other side (ILECs, cablecos and local and state government) has so much power it's just not worth it. Who has the budget and time to play this game?
- csmeder 16y ago
  By inovation do they mean innovative prices? "We are the first company in 2010 to charge so much for low speeds and get away with it". I spend 24.99 a month for 1mbps charter cable because it is what I can afford. In response Charter sends me "important notices" that they can save me a bundle by charging me over $70 for tv, phone and internet. It's one thing to spam people who aren't your customers, but to spam your customers with phony "important" notices every month is just tacky.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- hga 16y ago
  DOCSIS 3.0? Verizon FTTH? Compare to the extreme of the Tele Phone Company and your only being able to hook up slow modems you've leased from them. Yes, I agree with you the current situation in the US is bad in many way but I guarantee you the FCC can make it worse. Ignoring regulatory capture, how about the fact that none of their current top people are engineers?!??!!??!!!
  - tbrownaw 16y ago
    > Compare to the extreme of the Tele Phone Company and your only being able to hook up slow modems you've leased from them. I was under the impression that those phone company rules were done away with by government interference that was rather similar to what they're trying to do to internet connectivity now.
    - hga 16y ago
      But these phone company rules existed in the first place because the government granted AT&T a legal monopoly to provide service (well, service to the most profitable places; lots of rural areas had to get service from someone else such as GTE or set up their own ILECs).
mikedmiked 16y ago
Oh man this submission confused me - I use "miked" as my username on tonnes of sites, but not this one, and did a double take when I saw the name. Good article too.
- pbz 16y ago
  What exactly is good about it?
  - DanielBMarkham 16y ago
    Because 10 years from now when there is another administration that you don't agree with and they decide to impose something like fairness rule, impose content decency restrictions, dictate which sites may be accessed from the U.S or any one of a dozen other awful things, you'll know that this week the foundation was laid for that authority. I am in favor of the result, but this is a Faustian bargain. Broadband providers brought it on themselves by not getting their act together enough to create standards of service and instead were trying to milk the cash cow as much and as quickly as possible.
    - pbz 16y ago
      That claim is thrown out in the article, but as far I can see there's nothing to back it up. If anything it's the opposite. ISPs want to control and meter based on whatever rules they come up with (i.e. whatever increases their profits) while the government argues for neutrality. If we use the telephone industry as blueprint of what may happen, what aspects of the current policies worry you?
      - hga 16y ago
        In other words the ends justify the means, and you are 100% sure those you like will always be controlling the means.
        pbz 16y ago
        I can't be sure of what will happen, but I can tell you that ISPs want to control it now. There's something we can do about government, but very little about corporations (when they have a monopoly).
tbrownaw 16y ago
Wow that's messed up, I guess some people don't want to comprehend the difference between "you can't say/do certain things" and "you can't interfere with people saying/doing certain things".
rortian 16y ago
I was glad to see this announced, but please never try to convey news via the wsj opinion section.
dantheman 16y ago
Hopefully a judge will throw this out too.
- tbrownaw 16y ago
  Why, so we can have the only ISP that's allowed to serve an area filter out bittorrent and maybe charge a premium to access certain sites?
  - yummyfajitas 16y ago
    Now that the internet is under political control, the FCC might be the one banning bittorrent. Joe Biden is, after all, in the pockets of big content.
    - tbrownaw 16y ago
      See, that doesn't make any sense. "The Internet" is not being placed under any form of "political control". The ISPs, the people with the last-mile pipes are becoming regulated in the same manner as the phone companies already are. There's no more danger of the FCC banning bittorrent than there is of them banning phone sex operators; this reclassification DOES NOT give the FCC the power to ban sites/protocols/etc.
      - dantheman 16y ago
        Throughout history innovation and technology progressed and then became regulated, once regulated entrenched powers used regulation to stifle competition and cement their positions. This has happened again and again. Look at the history of the ICC for a brief example. If this was in reaction to a serious problem some might say it's justified, but as of right now we don't have any problems so lets let things progress naturally.
    - ajross 16y ago
      Wait. So Comcast actually has tried to filter and cap torrent traffic, and regulation to prevent that practice is bad because the regulatory agency might try to do the same thing? How does that logic possibly work?
NathanKP 16y ago
It is interesting that this article doesn't mention how the United States broadband companies, despite their trillions of investments still can't offer decent speeds at decent prices. When compared to other countries it is clear that the United States needs some sort of regulation on these internet providers for the good of everyone. Hopefully this doesn't come at the expense of openess.
- tbrownaw 16y ago
  Well, what we really need is a competitive last mile. But the states and municipalities like selling local monopolies and Congress doesn't seem to want to smack them down (the internet is used in interstate/global commerce; it's much less of a stretch than say growing your own weed having an effect on the interstate black market), so limiting what can be done with those monopolies is a decent second choice.
mwsherman 16y ago
Increased regulation means that would-be network providers need lawyers and lobbyists to compete. I can't get FIOS on my block in Manhattan even though I can see Verizon HQ from my window. I'd like to give them my money and they'd like to take it, but they haven't gotten over the regulatory hurdles to run a fiber. I am sure a small guy would love to do the same but there's no way they can get over those hurdles, if even Verizon struggles to do so. So yes, competition is de facto illegal. Regulation is good for incumbents. Or, more accurately, it prevents them from having to work harder. http://clipperhouse.com/blog/post/Net-neutrality-and-preserving-the-dinosaurs.aspx http://clipperhouse.com/blog/post/Net-neutrality-and-preserv...
- hga 16y ago
  In this case in theory Verizon has overcome the regulatory hurdles and will connect you up within a few years. But it did take them many years to get to this point. Of course dealing with NYC is a special worst case....
- jcnnghm 16y ago
  My area has very lax telecom regulation and we've had fios available fir years, and two competing cable companies. Prices are some of the lowest, and speeds are some of the fastest in the country.
- JamieEi 16y ago
  I'm in the same situation with FIOS in the heart of Seattle, but the mayor has personally told me that it has nothing to do with regulatory hurdles. The city would love to have Verizon compete with Comcast and has tried to work with them on making it happen. They aren't interested though.
  - mwsherman 16y ago
    Could be, but this says otherwise: http://seattlest.com/2009/05/07/fios_con_dios.php http://seattlest.com/2009/05/07/fios_con_dios.php
    - 16y ago
rwl 16y ago
"Mr. Genachowski has provided no evidence that the current regulatory approach is failing." Like the fact that ISPs are throttling the traffic of their customers, inspecting packets and giving preferential treatment to some in the name of "reasonable network management"? Like the fact that virtually everyone who has access to broadband at all has at most two provider choices, despite investment of "$576 billion in communications equipment and structures"? Like the fact that we lag behind other industrial nations in both speed and access to broadband, despite the "explosion of investment and Web innovation" this article attributes to light regulation? Regulation isn't perfect. As others have pointed out, it tends to benefit the big guys, and raise barriers to entry for competition. But given that we have big guys, that's going to happen anyway: oligopolies are very good at pushing out or buying up competition, entrenching the need for their services, and bullying consumers. They do so all the more aggressively if no one is watching them. If we accept that Internet access should be provided by the Verizons, Comcasts, and AT&T's of the world, then we should accept that they should be regulated, as effectively as possible and as heavily as necessary so that this compromise doesn't give the public the short end of the stick. Whether we should accept these companies as Internet gatekeepers at all is another matter.
- Calamitous 16y ago
  > If we accept that Internet access should be provided by the Verizons, Comcasts, and AT&T's of the world Why on Earth would we ever "accept" that?
  - rwl 16y ago
    Frankly, I don't know. But it seems that we have accepted that. Someone has, anyway, if the public debate is about how heavily to regulate ISPs, and not about whether we should have ISPs so big that they need a Federal-level regulator.
marcamillion 16y ago
Wow...the WSJ has sunk to a new low for me. 'Autos, health care, energy, Wall Street and now telecom. Is there any American industry this Administration doesn't want to run?' Are they joking? I know they profess to be 'free marketeers', but are you telling me that they really thought the Obama Administration should NOT have bailed out the Auto industry and forced them through pre-packaged bankruptcies? They should NOT fix the broken health care system? They should not tackle the looming energy crisis and allow wall street to run wild doing anything they want? Sometimes, I would prefer some amount of editorial integrity. The editors at WSJ need to say no Ailes & Murdoch at least some of the time.
- hga 16y ago
  "[...] are you telling me that they really thought the Obama Administration should NOT have bailed out the Auto industry and forced them through pre-packaged bankruptcies?" Yes, that's exactly what the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal thought. Not to mention it being the first example of Obama's style of "gangster government" as Micheal Barone puts it (http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/Gangster-Government-becomes-a-long-running-series-91656284.html http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/Gangster-Governme...) Do you seriously think Government Motors will survive without endless bailouts (or suppression of its competitors like Toyota (which has its problems, but the piling on is more than unseemly))? The editorial board thinks ObamaCare will make the system worse and won't fix much if anything (heck, after all this fuss, it still isn't going to cover every American citizen and legal resident). That's rather different than the straw man of "should NOT fix the broken health care system". The energy crisis has been "looming" since the early '70s. History pretty convincingly shows that the free market, e.g. Reagan removing oil and gas price controls, beats central planning hands down. I was there; if you weren't, you might want to read up on it. I will agree that they go too far in the promotion of allowing "wall street to run wild doing anything they want", e.g. essays in support of insider trading (excepting those based on the nasty problem of it having no statutory definition) and the backdating of stock options. But they also have all sorts of good points that are backed by evidence (we've accumulated a lot by now). Let's put it this way: given that we're on HN and likely interested in startups: did the government's suppression of IPOs (expensing and SARBOX) help any of us? The game of venture capital that ran from the late '50s to the dot.com bust is over. I've been reading the editorial page of the Journal since 1970 (sic) and I haven't noticed any significant change due to Murdoch. (Where does Alies fit into this???)

18 points by miked 16y ago

For the past decade, broadband has been classified as an "information service" and thus more lightly regulated than traditional telephone services. This has led to an explosion of new investment and Web innovation I'm sorry - but, what?! There's been innovation on the web because the telecom industry was deregulated?! All I can see is that the current telcos have no incentive to innovate in any way, and are gouging consumers as much as they can while the US lags behind the rest of the world in broadband speed and availability! What this is, is a thinly veiled attempt at trying to blame the left-leaning administration for an evil communist plot - while all it's trying to do is force telcos to catch up with the rest of the world...

yummyfajitas 16y ago
It's a relative comparison. Compare the gains in internet to the gains in plain old telephone service. Incidentally, much of the rest of the world has less regulation than us. In Korea, for example, you have competition between multiple internet providers (i.e., more than just Verizon and Cable). In the US, such competition is illegal.
- hga 16y ago
  De facto illegal. In theory other companies can run wires or fiber, and most certainly they can and many do it with radio, it's just that the legal monopoly incumbents have too many advantages. Plus backhaul is very expensive in lots of places.
  - tbrownaw 16y ago
    > In theory other companies can run wires or fiber, and most certainly they can and many do it with radio I thought there tended to be monopolies on wires/fiber granted by local governments (supposedly to limit the number of companies tearing up roads and the like to install new infrastructure, but more likely to create a scarce privilege they can sell)? Radio tends to be much lower bandwidth, and can be susceptible to bad weather.
    - hga 16y ago
      In theory I think you can go to Federal court and get these overturned, but I could of course be wrong. We're not likely to find out since the other side (ILECs, cablecos and local and state government) has so much power it's just not worth it. Who has the budget and time to play this game?
csmeder 16y ago
By inovation do they mean innovative prices? "We are the first company in 2010 to charge so much for low speeds and get away with it". I spend 24.99 a month for 1mbps charter cable because it is what I can afford. In response Charter sends me "important notices" that they can save me a bundle by charging me over $70 for tv, phone and internet. It's one thing to spam people who aren't your customers, but to spam your customers with phony "important" notices every month is just tacky.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
hga 16y ago
DOCSIS 3.0? Verizon FTTH? Compare to the extreme of the Tele Phone Company and your only being able to hook up slow modems you've leased from them. Yes, I agree with you the current situation in the US is bad in many way but I guarantee you the FCC can make it worse. Ignoring regulatory capture, how about the fact that none of their current top people are engineers?!??!!??!!!
- tbrownaw 16y ago
  > Compare to the extreme of the Tele Phone Company and your only being able to hook up slow modems you've leased from them. I was under the impression that those phone company rules were done away with by government interference that was rather similar to what they're trying to do to internet connectivity now.
  - hga 16y ago
    But these phone company rules existed in the first place because the government granted AT&T a legal monopoly to provide service (well, service to the most profitable places; lots of rural areas had to get service from someone else such as GTE or set up their own ILECs).

mikedmiked 16y ago

Oh man this submission confused me - I use "miked" as my username on tonnes of sites, but not this one, and did a double take when I saw the name. Good article too.

pbz 16y ago
What exactly is good about it?
- DanielBMarkham 16y ago
  Because 10 years from now when there is another administration that you don't agree with and they decide to impose something like fairness rule, impose content decency restrictions, dictate which sites may be accessed from the U.S or any one of a dozen other awful things, you'll know that this week the foundation was laid for that authority. I am in favor of the result, but this is a Faustian bargain. Broadband providers brought it on themselves by not getting their act together enough to create standards of service and instead were trying to milk the cash cow as much and as quickly as possible.
  - pbz 16y ago
    That claim is thrown out in the article, but as far I can see there's nothing to back it up. If anything it's the opposite. ISPs want to control and meter based on whatever rules they come up with (i.e. whatever increases their profits) while the government argues for neutrality. If we use the telephone industry as blueprint of what may happen, what aspects of the current policies worry you?
    - hga 16y ago
      In other words the ends justify the means, and you are 100% sure those you like will always be controlling the means.
      - pbz 16y ago
        I can't be sure of what will happen, but I can tell you that ISPs want to control it now. There's something we can do about government, but very little about corporations (when they have a monopoly).

tbrownaw 16y ago

Wow that's messed up, I guess some people don't want to comprehend the difference between "you can't say/do certain things" and "you can't interfere with people saying/doing certain things".

rortian 16y ago

I was glad to see this announced, but please never try to convey news via the wsj opinion section.

dantheman 16y ago

Hopefully a judge will throw this out too.

tbrownaw 16y ago
Why, so we can have the only ISP that's allowed to serve an area filter out bittorrent and maybe charge a premium to access certain sites?
- yummyfajitas 16y ago
  Now that the internet is under political control, the FCC might be the one banning bittorrent. Joe Biden is, after all, in the pockets of big content.
  - tbrownaw 16y ago
    See, that doesn't make any sense. "The Internet" is not being placed under any form of "political control". The ISPs, the people with the last-mile pipes are becoming regulated in the same manner as the phone companies already are. There's no more danger of the FCC banning bittorrent than there is of them banning phone sex operators; this reclassification DOES NOT give the FCC the power to ban sites/protocols/etc.
    - dantheman 16y ago
      Throughout history innovation and technology progressed and then became regulated, once regulated entrenched powers used regulation to stifle competition and cement their positions. This has happened again and again. Look at the history of the ICC for a brief example. If this was in reaction to a serious problem some might say it's justified, but as of right now we don't have any problems so lets let things progress naturally.
  - ajross 16y ago
    Wait. So Comcast actually has tried to filter and cap torrent traffic, and regulation to prevent that practice is bad because the regulatory agency might try to do the same thing? How does that logic possibly work?

NathanKP 16y ago

It is interesting that this article doesn't mention how the United States broadband companies, despite their trillions of investments still can't offer decent speeds at decent prices. When compared to other countries it is clear that the United States needs some sort of regulation on these internet providers for the good of everyone. Hopefully this doesn't come at the expense of openess.

tbrownaw 16y ago
Well, what we really need is a competitive last mile. But the states and municipalities like selling local monopolies and Congress doesn't seem to want to smack them down (the internet is used in interstate/global commerce; it's much less of a stretch than say growing your own weed having an effect on the interstate black market), so limiting what can be done with those monopolies is a decent second choice.

mwsherman 16y ago

Increased regulation means that would-be network providers need lawyers and lobbyists to compete. I can't get FIOS on my block in Manhattan even though I can see Verizon HQ from my window. I'd like to give them my money and they'd like to take it, but they haven't gotten over the regulatory hurdles to run a fiber. I am sure a small guy would love to do the same but there's no way they can get over those hurdles, if even Verizon struggles to do so. So yes, competition is de facto illegal. Regulation is good for incumbents. Or, more accurately, it prevents them from having to work harder. http://clipperhouse.com/blog/post/Net-neutrality-and-preserving-the-dinosaurs.aspx http://clipperhouse.com/blog/post/Net-neutrality-and-preserv...

hga 16y ago
In this case in theory Verizon has overcome the regulatory hurdles and will connect you up within a few years. But it did take them many years to get to this point. Of course dealing with NYC is a special worst case....
jcnnghm 16y ago
My area has very lax telecom regulation and we've had fios available fir years, and two competing cable companies. Prices are some of the lowest, and speeds are some of the fastest in the country.
JamieEi 16y ago
I'm in the same situation with FIOS in the heart of Seattle, but the mayor has personally told me that it has nothing to do with regulatory hurdles. The city would love to have Verizon compete with Comcast and has tried to work with them on making it happen. They aren't interested though.
- mwsherman 16y ago
  Could be, but this says otherwise: http://seattlest.com/2009/05/07/fios_con_dios.php http://seattlest.com/2009/05/07/fios_con_dios.php
  - 16y ago

rwl 16y ago

"Mr. Genachowski has provided no evidence that the current regulatory approach is failing." Like the fact that ISPs are throttling the traffic of their customers, inspecting packets and giving preferential treatment to some in the name of "reasonable network management"? Like the fact that virtually everyone who has access to broadband at all has at most two provider choices, despite investment of "$576 billion in communications equipment and structures"? Like the fact that we lag behind other industrial nations in both speed and access to broadband, despite the "explosion of investment and Web innovation" this article attributes to light regulation? Regulation isn't perfect. As others have pointed out, it tends to benefit the big guys, and raise barriers to entry for competition. But given that we have big guys, that's going to happen anyway: oligopolies are very good at pushing out or buying up competition, entrenching the need for their services, and bullying consumers. They do so all the more aggressively if no one is watching them. If we accept that Internet access should be provided by the Verizons, Comcasts, and AT&T's of the world, then we should accept that they should be regulated, as effectively as possible and as heavily as necessary so that this compromise doesn't give the public the short end of the stick. Whether we should accept these companies as Internet gatekeepers at all is another matter.

Calamitous 16y ago
> If we accept that Internet access should be provided by the Verizons, Comcasts, and AT&T's of the world Why on Earth would we ever "accept" that?
- rwl 16y ago
  Frankly, I don't know. But it seems that we have accepted that. Someone has, anyway, if the public debate is about how heavily to regulate ISPs, and not about whether we should have ISPs so big that they need a Federal-level regulator.

marcamillion 16y ago

Wow...the WSJ has sunk to a new low for me. 'Autos, health care, energy, Wall Street and now telecom. Is there any American industry this Administration doesn't want to run?' Are they joking? I know they profess to be 'free marketeers', but are you telling me that they really thought the Obama Administration should NOT have bailed out the Auto industry and forced them through pre-packaged bankruptcies? They should NOT fix the broken health care system? They should not tackle the looming energy crisis and allow wall street to run wild doing anything they want? Sometimes, I would prefer some amount of editorial integrity. The editors at WSJ need to say no Ailes & Murdoch at least some of the time.

hga 16y ago
"[...] are you telling me that they really thought the Obama Administration should NOT have bailed out the Auto industry and forced them through pre-packaged bankruptcies?" Yes, that's exactly what the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal thought. Not to mention it being the first example of Obama's style of "gangster government" as Micheal Barone puts it (http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/Gangster-Government-becomes-a-long-running-series-91656284.html http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/Gangster-Governme...) Do you seriously think Government Motors will survive without endless bailouts (or suppression of its competitors like Toyota (which has its problems, but the piling on is more than unseemly))? The editorial board thinks ObamaCare will make the system worse and won't fix much if anything (heck, after all this fuss, it still isn't going to cover every American citizen and legal resident). That's rather different than the straw man of "should NOT fix the broken health care system". The energy crisis has been "looming" since the early '70s. History pretty convincingly shows that the free market, e.g. Reagan removing oil and gas price controls, beats central planning hands down. I was there; if you weren't, you might want to read up on it. I will agree that they go too far in the promotion of allowing "wall street to run wild doing anything they want", e.g. essays in support of insider trading (excepting those based on the nasty problem of it having no statutory definition) and the backdating of stock options. But they also have all sorts of good points that are backed by evidence (we've accumulated a lot by now). Let's put it this way: given that we're on HN and likely interested in startups: did the government's suppression of IPOs (expensing and SARBOX) help any of us? The game of venture capital that ran from the late '50s to the dot.com bust is over. I've been reading the editorial page of the Journal since 1970 (sic) and I haven't noticed any significant change due to Murdoch. (Where does Alies fit into this???)