7 ms·

FCC Commissioner Vows to Ignore Staff's 'Serious Concerns' About Net Neutrality

107 points by ourmandave 10y ago

westmeal 10y ago
Whoopee.
mulmen 10y ago
If we really care about net neutrality is it viable to create our own ISPs? Are net neutrality rules different between the backbone networks?
- croon 10y ago
  Can you get around last mile monopolies?
  - SEJeff 10y ago
    Without laying fiber or networks to the millions of homes around the entire united states (kind of like google tried and found not economically viable), no.
    - rayiner 10y ago
      That is, ironically, a problem largely created by public interest minded people. Most places in the U.S., it is illegal for an ISP startup to be like Apple: targeting the lucrative high end of the market and working down. You have to build out to every neighborhood, even in nehgborhoods where the cost of build out will be more than what you can hope to make from subscribers there. That means even behemoths find it difficult to enter each others' markets. Baltimore, for example, wants fiber. Verizon was ready to build fiber. It would have been easy--Baltimore's suburbs are already wired. But the city wouldn't give Verizon a television license (fundamental to the economics of broadband) without universal build out. But it just didn't make sense to do that in a city where a third of the population is below the poverty line. In fact, nobody has been willing to build fiber in Baltimore on those terms, despite the city railing against Comcast and trying to get a competitor.
      - SEJeff 10y ago
        Not quite, that is an issue, but not remotely the biggest one. The biggest problem (and google themselves admit this!) is planning and zoning happens at the city and even county / neighborhood level. If you want to move into a city like say Chicago you don't just need to pass city muster. You need to get the alderman to agree for each small neighborhood. What if you need to lay fiber through neighborhood B to reach neighborhood C from neighborhood A and the zoning committee in B denies you? Well that just cut off a large swath of potential clients. This is fundamentally a problem with all infrastructure improvements in the US. The local communities have too much control over what happens. This is also why things like infra happen to move so quickly in a place like say China where the federal govt can trample over all local regulations. For things like infrastructure, this is a great thing.
  - PeterisP 10y ago
    Sometimes you aren't allowed to - the local regulations can prohibit you from building your own last mile even if you wanted to pay the huge cost to needlessly duplicate it.
  - gniv 10y ago
    I really hope the new wireless attempts to the last mile are successful. I think both Google and Facebook are seriously trying.
  - barneygumble742 10y ago
    It would be great if I can buy my physical line (to the interconnect) from my current ISP. Then I'm responsible for getting someone to service the quality of that connection between my house and this connection.
- jasonjayr 10y ago
  The difficulty, is that where this matters is in the "last mile" leg of the connection. Which, to do at scale, is notoriously difficult given the required capital expenditures, as well as navigating the regulation minefield, that the incumbents do everything in their power to keep difficult.
  - throwaway92438 10y ago
    Is it really last _mile_? If the missing leg of the connection is truly that short, could there be an opportunity for inexpensive cooperative wireless mesh routing in neighborhoods with several outlet nodes onto more regulation-sparse fiber? Or is 'last mile' just a euphemism for distances that in actuality are much larger?
    - jasonjayr 10y ago
      Last mile is a euphemism for: * Interconnects * Customer Support * Pole Access * Physical Plant * Customer Premise Equipment (CPE) Perhaps if the FCC would designate more long-range friendly frequencies as unlicensed, perhaps with slightly higher power limits, you could eliminate a few of those items? Don't get me wrong -- there are many cooperatives very successfully running stable and competitive wireless mesh networks, but that model doesn't work very well in major metro areas, with lots of buildings, and very high-density users.
    - omouse 10y ago
      This was tried in the mid to late 2000s and many of the mesh networks, at least the ones run by cities, were shut down or are much smaller now. The problem with doing things through the legal system or through government is that mesh routing can be seen as competitive to the existing oligopoly (which has more $$ to lobby government to increase barriers to entry). Sharing one beefy connection with 10-20 people in a few nearby houses would be a good first step because it's under the radar of the big telecomm companies and you can't be legally barred from sharing your connection?
    - wongarsu 10y ago
      I love cooperative mesh networks, but they can't really compete on speed and latency with regular internet connections.
- dahart 10y ago
  If we really care about net neutrality, we should focus on privacy. If we build the internet so that it hides the destination data from the carrier, net neutrality will automatically happen as a byproduct, and we don't need the FCC or have to care about different backbone networks. We should stop arguing that AT&T should be legally barred from doing something with the data it has access to, and start making it so that AT&T doesn't have access to that data.
  - tremon 10y ago
    We should stop arguing that AT&T should be legally barred from doing something with the data it has access to Why should we stop arguing that? The postal service operates under the same constraints.
    - dahart 10y ago
      I thought I explained that in the remainder of my sentence, but I'll go ahead and clarify that I do think AT&T should be legally barred, but I also think it's a waste of time to argue about it. It's a question of effectiveness and of time & energy and how to best spend it. Why spend time asking lawmakers for net neutrality regulation, when instead we could do what we do best as engineers and build the network such that net neutrality and privacy is built in. Then we don't have to sit around hoping that AT&T and others are not tempted to seek ways to make money. Why spend time writing articles that complain about the Republican pro-industry FCC, when we have the power amongst ourselves to build a better internet and take the question of net neutrality off the table entirely? The USPS analogy is a bit apples to oranges; the USPS is a government organization and AT&T is one of many private for-profit entities that carry our digital communication. Furthermore, AT&T already was legally barred from listening to conversations going through their network and they did it anyway. I don't exactly trust them, even if there are laws. I don't think we should expect companies to not try to make money. Their function is to try to make money. If they see ways to try to make money, by asking consumers to pay extra for faster connections to Netflix, they should be allowed to offer premium services. A big problem with the question of net neutrality is that it's subjective. It's fair to say they're slowing people down if they don't pay more. It's also fair to say they're just offering premium service for a premium fee. These is no winning this argument, both sides have valid arguments. Focusing on privacy instead will answer a question that has a clearer "right" answer, and it will automatically yield a network that has net neutrality built in.
- pjc50 10y ago
  You can certainly do that, but only in countries that have LLU (local loop unbundling) where you can create an ISP without having to own a ton of wire. The US does not have this market-promoting measure.
karmelapple 10y ago
What is the best concrete action to take to express our concerns to the FCC?
- wodencafe 10y ago
  But if the new FCC Commissioner's mind is already made up before he takes the job, there is no incentive to listen to our concerns.
  - karmelapple 10y ago
    If a commissioner can make a decision unilaterally and not be subject to concerned citizens and lawmakers saying "that's a bad idea," then something is wrong.
LeifCarrotson 10y ago
The actual letter from the likely future commissioner: > STATEMENT OF FCC COMMISSIONER AJIT PAI > On the FCC’s Midnight Regulation of Free Data > WASHINGTON, January 11, 2017.—It is disappointing that the FCC’s current leadership has yet again chosen to spend its last days in office the same way it spent the last few years—cutting corners on process, keeping fellow Commissioners in the dark, and pursuing partisan, political agendas that only harm investment and innovation. > This time the midnight regulations come in the form of a Bureau-level report casting doubt on the legality of free data offerings—offerings that are popular among consumers precisely because they allow more access to online music, videos, and other content free of charge. This report, which I only saw after the FCC released the document, does not reflect the views of the majority of Commissioners. Fortunately, I am confident that this latest regulatory spasm will not have any impact on the Commission’s policymaking or enforcement activities following next week’s inauguration. > It was my hope—as I have consistently expressed to my colleagues—that we could spend the remaining days of this Administration working together with bipartisan comity to ensure a smooth transition. It is sad that the outgoing leadership of the agency has chosen a different path. > Office of Commissioner Ajit Pai: (202) 418-2000 > Twitter: @AjitPaiFCC > https://www.fcc.gov/about/leadership/ajit-pai https://www.fcc.gov/about/leadership/ajit-pai From https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-342990A1.docx https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-342990A1.d.... Note the .docx (not .html or even .pdf) suffix on that link. Note the .docx suffix and weep. Contrast this with Tom Wheeler's report from yesterday: http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2017/db0111/DOC-342982A1.pdf http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2017... (.pdf, which your browser probably handles well) which, starting on page 15, analyzes existing wireless carrier zero-rating plans and finds issue with AT&T's Sponsored Data zero-rating its own DirectTV service, suggesting that "these sponsored data offerings may harm consumers and competition by unreasonably discriminating in favor of downstream providers owned or affiliated with the network providers." Tom, we're going to miss you.
- acomjean 10y ago
  Commissioner Pai seems to have rebranded "Zero-Rated" content as "free data offerings", but its not really free, you already are a paying customer. Also really political wording: "popular among consumers precisely because they allow more access to online music, videos, and other content free of charge" instead of the more accurate "access to our chosen providers online music... without counting against your data cap" ok t-mobile is the one company that doesn't charge to be a "chosen provider", but the others. This doesn't bode well..
croon 10y ago
Every day something worse.
- ajmurmann 10y ago
  Yes. A few days ago I remembered the floating island states that were discussed a few years back. Ever since I can't stop to fantasize about it.
mtgx 10y ago
If only Republicans actually stood up to market principles and they didn't just use them as an excuse to help their big corporation buddies, and then that's it. I actually believe a free market full of competition would work way better than most regulations would in trying to restrict a few monopolies from doing harm. Although I don't think a free market should be free of any regulations. A baseline of regulations is needed to ensure that competitors play fair. We actually have proof of this with Google Fiber. Wherever Google Fiber would land, previous local monopolies would trip over themselves to drastically increase the value of their offerings (but still being significantly behind Google Fiber). As soon as Google announced it would kill Fiber, all of that stopped, and they even reduced the value in their offers in some places. I get it that cable companies need to be somehow rewarded for digging ditches to lay cable, but that doesn't necessarily mean they ought to be given a legal monopoly in that state or city. If you must, just pass a law that would force that cable provider to license its cables at a fair price. Then you'd have some competition, but it would also get to recover the cost of digging (the more competitors/clients the faster it can do that).
- clarkmoody 10y ago
  You want Republicans to be Libertarians, which they are not. I think the cable companies probably waited for government-granted monopolies before they invested in the last-mile infrastructure, because they wanted to be sure it would be worth it. So on a free market, the investment in infrastructure would have been slower (probably), but competition would be better long-term. Although any infrastructure discussion must include the phenomenon of suburban sprawl fueled by government's over-investment in roads.
  - mtgx 10y ago
    I know they aren't. But they pretend to be for the most part (except the social issues and religious issues). Also, I disagree with "pure libertarianism" myself. I think fair baseline standards are needed to establish a level playing field. But what the U.S. has now is far from a "free market" anymore. It's much closer to a "pay to play" market.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
firasd 10y ago
This “zero rating” was the bone of contention in the big fight against Facebook’s Free Basics in India, where this sort of price discrimination for data was eventually blocked. We did this after the grassroots movement for Net Neutrality in the US, so maybe it’s time for the US to pick up the baton again… the price of net neutrality is eternal protest?
- ionised 10y ago
  > the price of net neutrality is eternal protest? It's not enough to win net neutrality. Like everything else worth fighting for, you have to remain vigilant and watchful in order to defend it.
- snsr 10y ago
  > … the price of net neutrality is eternal protest? When shills like Ajit Pai are in power at the FCC, yes.
- Someone1234 10y ago
  Eternal or until Internet is correctly reclassified as a public utility like roads, bridges, and other vital infrastructure. Then the government can pick up responsibility for the last mile, and you can buy internet service from one of a two dozen different providers (who utilise and pay rent on the government's last mile cabling). That's where we'll wind up eventually. Government will put fiber into every home, then cable companies and internet companies will use that fiber and pay a fee to the government while charging end users.
  - bjelkeman-again 10y ago
    This is similar to what we have in many urban areas in Sweden. It works really well. The local government runs the local fibre loop, just as it runs roads, piped water, electricity, sewage, and other services too, like schools and hospitals etc. One key thing is that the local government has local taxation rights to be able match the demand. Water, fibre, electricity is run on fees, and things like schools, roads and hospitals are run on taxes.
  - 10y ago

107 points by ourmandave 10y ago

Whoopee.

If we really care about net neutrality is it viable to create our own ISPs? Are net neutrality rules different between the backbone networks?

croon 10y ago
Can you get around last mile monopolies?
- SEJeff 10y ago
  Without laying fiber or networks to the millions of homes around the entire united states (kind of like google tried and found not economically viable), no.
  - rayiner 10y ago
    That is, ironically, a problem largely created by public interest minded people. Most places in the U.S., it is illegal for an ISP startup to be like Apple: targeting the lucrative high end of the market and working down. You have to build out to every neighborhood, even in nehgborhoods where the cost of build out will be more than what you can hope to make from subscribers there. That means even behemoths find it difficult to enter each others' markets. Baltimore, for example, wants fiber. Verizon was ready to build fiber. It would have been easy--Baltimore's suburbs are already wired. But the city wouldn't give Verizon a television license (fundamental to the economics of broadband) without universal build out. But it just didn't make sense to do that in a city where a third of the population is below the poverty line. In fact, nobody has been willing to build fiber in Baltimore on those terms, despite the city railing against Comcast and trying to get a competitor.
    - SEJeff 10y ago
      Not quite, that is an issue, but not remotely the biggest one. The biggest problem (and google themselves admit this!) is planning and zoning happens at the city and even county / neighborhood level. If you want to move into a city like say Chicago you don't just need to pass city muster. You need to get the alderman to agree for each small neighborhood. What if you need to lay fiber through neighborhood B to reach neighborhood C from neighborhood A and the zoning committee in B denies you? Well that just cut off a large swath of potential clients. This is fundamentally a problem with all infrastructure improvements in the US. The local communities have too much control over what happens. This is also why things like infra happen to move so quickly in a place like say China where the federal govt can trample over all local regulations. For things like infrastructure, this is a great thing.
- PeterisP 10y ago
  Sometimes you aren't allowed to - the local regulations can prohibit you from building your own last mile even if you wanted to pay the huge cost to needlessly duplicate it.
- gniv 10y ago
  I really hope the new wireless attempts to the last mile are successful. I think both Google and Facebook are seriously trying.
- barneygumble742 10y ago
  It would be great if I can buy my physical line (to the interconnect) from my current ISP. Then I'm responsible for getting someone to service the quality of that connection between my house and this connection.
jasonjayr 10y ago
The difficulty, is that where this matters is in the "last mile" leg of the connection. Which, to do at scale, is notoriously difficult given the required capital expenditures, as well as navigating the regulation minefield, that the incumbents do everything in their power to keep difficult.
- throwaway92438 10y ago
  Is it really last _mile_? If the missing leg of the connection is truly that short, could there be an opportunity for inexpensive cooperative wireless mesh routing in neighborhoods with several outlet nodes onto more regulation-sparse fiber? Or is 'last mile' just a euphemism for distances that in actuality are much larger?
  - jasonjayr 10y ago
    Last mile is a euphemism for: * Interconnects * Customer Support * Pole Access * Physical Plant * Customer Premise Equipment (CPE) Perhaps if the FCC would designate more long-range friendly frequencies as unlicensed, perhaps with slightly higher power limits, you could eliminate a few of those items? Don't get me wrong -- there are many cooperatives very successfully running stable and competitive wireless mesh networks, but that model doesn't work very well in major metro areas, with lots of buildings, and very high-density users.
  - omouse 10y ago
    This was tried in the mid to late 2000s and many of the mesh networks, at least the ones run by cities, were shut down or are much smaller now. The problem with doing things through the legal system or through government is that mesh routing can be seen as competitive to the existing oligopoly (which has more $$ to lobby government to increase barriers to entry). Sharing one beefy connection with 10-20 people in a few nearby houses would be a good first step because it's under the radar of the big telecomm companies and you can't be legally barred from sharing your connection?
  - wongarsu 10y ago
    I love cooperative mesh networks, but they can't really compete on speed and latency with regular internet connections.
dahart 10y ago
If we really care about net neutrality, we should focus on privacy. If we build the internet so that it hides the destination data from the carrier, net neutrality will automatically happen as a byproduct, and we don't need the FCC or have to care about different backbone networks. We should stop arguing that AT&T should be legally barred from doing something with the data it has access to, and start making it so that AT&T doesn't have access to that data.
- tremon 10y ago
  We should stop arguing that AT&T should be legally barred from doing something with the data it has access to Why should we stop arguing that? The postal service operates under the same constraints.
  - dahart 10y ago
    I thought I explained that in the remainder of my sentence, but I'll go ahead and clarify that I do think AT&T should be legally barred, but I also think it's a waste of time to argue about it. It's a question of effectiveness and of time & energy and how to best spend it. Why spend time asking lawmakers for net neutrality regulation, when instead we could do what we do best as engineers and build the network such that net neutrality and privacy is built in. Then we don't have to sit around hoping that AT&T and others are not tempted to seek ways to make money. Why spend time writing articles that complain about the Republican pro-industry FCC, when we have the power amongst ourselves to build a better internet and take the question of net neutrality off the table entirely? The USPS analogy is a bit apples to oranges; the USPS is a government organization and AT&T is one of many private for-profit entities that carry our digital communication. Furthermore, AT&T already was legally barred from listening to conversations going through their network and they did it anyway. I don't exactly trust them, even if there are laws. I don't think we should expect companies to not try to make money. Their function is to try to make money. If they see ways to try to make money, by asking consumers to pay extra for faster connections to Netflix, they should be allowed to offer premium services. A big problem with the question of net neutrality is that it's subjective. It's fair to say they're slowing people down if they don't pay more. It's also fair to say they're just offering premium service for a premium fee. These is no winning this argument, both sides have valid arguments. Focusing on privacy instead will answer a question that has a clearer "right" answer, and it will automatically yield a network that has net neutrality built in.
pjc50 10y ago
You can certainly do that, but only in countries that have LLU (local loop unbundling) where you can create an ISP without having to own a ton of wire. The US does not have this market-promoting measure.

karmelapple 10y ago

What is the best concrete action to take to express our concerns to the FCC?

wodencafe 10y ago
But if the new FCC Commissioner's mind is already made up before he takes the job, there is no incentive to listen to our concerns.
- karmelapple 10y ago
  If a commissioner can make a decision unilaterally and not be subject to concerned citizens and lawmakers saying "that's a bad idea," then something is wrong.

LeifCarrotson 10y ago

The actual letter from the likely future commissioner: > STATEMENT OF FCC COMMISSIONER AJIT PAI > On the FCC’s Midnight Regulation of Free Data > WASHINGTON, January 11, 2017.—It is disappointing that the FCC’s current leadership has yet again chosen to spend its last days in office the same way it spent the last few years—cutting corners on process, keeping fellow Commissioners in the dark, and pursuing partisan, political agendas that only harm investment and innovation. > This time the midnight regulations come in the form of a Bureau-level report casting doubt on the legality of free data offerings—offerings that are popular among consumers precisely because they allow more access to online music, videos, and other content free of charge. This report, which I only saw after the FCC released the document, does not reflect the views of the majority of Commissioners. Fortunately, I am confident that this latest regulatory spasm will not have any impact on the Commission’s policymaking or enforcement activities following next week’s inauguration. > It was my hope—as I have consistently expressed to my colleagues—that we could spend the remaining days of this Administration working together with bipartisan comity to ensure a smooth transition. It is sad that the outgoing leadership of the agency has chosen a different path. > Office of Commissioner Ajit Pai: (202) 418-2000 > Twitter: @AjitPaiFCC > https://www.fcc.gov/about/leadership/ajit-pai https://www.fcc.gov/about/leadership/ajit-pai From https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-342990A1.docx https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-342990A1.d.... Note the .docx (not .html or even .pdf) suffix on that link. Note the .docx suffix and weep. Contrast this with Tom Wheeler's report from yesterday: http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2017/db0111/DOC-342982A1.pdf http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2017... (.pdf, which your browser probably handles well) which, starting on page 15, analyzes existing wireless carrier zero-rating plans and finds issue with AT&T's Sponsored Data zero-rating its own DirectTV service, suggesting that "these sponsored data offerings may harm consumers and competition by unreasonably discriminating in favor of downstream providers owned or affiliated with the network providers." Tom, we're going to miss you.

acomjean 10y ago
Commissioner Pai seems to have rebranded "Zero-Rated" content as "free data offerings", but its not really free, you already are a paying customer. Also really political wording: "popular among consumers precisely because they allow more access to online music, videos, and other content free of charge" instead of the more accurate "access to our chosen providers online music... without counting against your data cap" ok t-mobile is the one company that doesn't charge to be a "chosen provider", but the others. This doesn't bode well..

croon 10y ago

Every day something worse.

ajmurmann 10y ago
Yes. A few days ago I remembered the floating island states that were discussed a few years back. Ever since I can't stop to fantasize about it.

mtgx 10y ago

If only Republicans actually stood up to market principles and they didn't just use them as an excuse to help their big corporation buddies, and then that's it. I actually believe a free market full of competition would work way better than most regulations would in trying to restrict a few monopolies from doing harm. Although I don't think a free market should be free of any regulations. A baseline of regulations is needed to ensure that competitors play fair. We actually have proof of this with Google Fiber. Wherever Google Fiber would land, previous local monopolies would trip over themselves to drastically increase the value of their offerings (but still being significantly behind Google Fiber). As soon as Google announced it would kill Fiber, all of that stopped, and they even reduced the value in their offers in some places. I get it that cable companies need to be somehow rewarded for digging ditches to lay cable, but that doesn't necessarily mean they ought to be given a legal monopoly in that state or city. If you must, just pass a law that would force that cable provider to license its cables at a fair price. Then you'd have some competition, but it would also get to recover the cost of digging (the more competitors/clients the faster it can do that).

clarkmoody 10y ago
You want Republicans to be Libertarians, which they are not. I think the cable companies probably waited for government-granted monopolies before they invested in the last-mile infrastructure, because they wanted to be sure it would be worth it. So on a free market, the investment in infrastructure would have been slower (probably), but competition would be better long-term. Although any infrastructure discussion must include the phenomenon of suburban sprawl fueled by government's over-investment in roads.
- mtgx 10y ago
  I know they aren't. But they pretend to be for the most part (except the social issues and religious issues). Also, I disagree with "pure libertarianism" myself. I think fair baseline standards are needed to establish a level playing field. But what the U.S. has now is far from a "free market" anymore. It's much closer to a "pay to play" market.
- dragonwriter 10y ago

firasd 10y ago

This “zero rating” was the bone of contention in the big fight against Facebook’s Free Basics in India, where this sort of price discrimination for data was eventually blocked. We did this after the grassroots movement for Net Neutrality in the US, so maybe it’s time for the US to pick up the baton again… the price of net neutrality is eternal protest?

ionised 10y ago
> the price of net neutrality is eternal protest? It's not enough to win net neutrality. Like everything else worth fighting for, you have to remain vigilant and watchful in order to defend it.
snsr 10y ago
> … the price of net neutrality is eternal protest? When shills like Ajit Pai are in power at the FCC, yes.
Someone1234 10y ago
Eternal or until Internet is correctly reclassified as a public utility like roads, bridges, and other vital infrastructure. Then the government can pick up responsibility for the last mile, and you can buy internet service from one of a two dozen different providers (who utilise and pay rent on the government's last mile cabling). That's where we'll wind up eventually. Government will put fiber into every home, then cable companies and internet companies will use that fiber and pay a fee to the government while charging end users.
- bjelkeman-again 10y ago
  This is similar to what we have in many urban areas in Sweden. It works really well. The local government runs the local fibre loop, just as it runs roads, piped water, electricity, sewage, and other services too, like schools and hospitals etc. One key thing is that the local government has local taxation rights to be able match the demand. Water, fibre, electricity is run on fees, and things like schools, roads and hospitals are run on taxes.
- 10y ago