11 ms·

A contrary view: http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrydownes/2017/01/24/why-is-the-media-smearing-new-fcc-chair-ajit-pai-as-the-enemy-of-net-neutrality/#302a479f4c7

A contrary view: http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrydownes/2017/01/24/why-is-the-media-smearing-new-fcc-chair-ajit-pai-as-the-enemy-of-net-neutrality/#302a479f4c7f http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrydownes/2017/01/24/why-is-th... I'm not really sure what to think about a lot of this. What I do believe is: () We need meaningful competition for broadband. (I live in Silicon Valley and all I can get is Comcast!) () A given company should not be able to be in both the content and connectivity businesses. If classifying broadband as a utility is the right way to accomplish this, let's keep it; otherwise, let's find a different way. I'm open to argument about the means, but not so much about the goal. () Laws proscribing localities from setting up their own broadband utilities are unconscionable and need to be gotten rid of. I don't know if the FCC or even Congress can do this -- these are mostly state laws. I don't know if Ajit Pai is going to bring us any closer to this world or not.

ComradeTaco 10y ago
I disagree fundamentally with Ajit Pai's reasoning that minimal regulation will lead to innovation and lower consumer price. There are some industries that are natural monopolies, like water and electricity, because it's incredibly expensive to build both last mile connections and core infrastructure. They're also natural monopolies because you don't really have great, cost competitive alternatives to water and electricity provided on a large scale. When you consider hard wired internet, it bares of a lot of similarity to utilities, in the cost and difficulty of accumulating infrastructure and in the absence of effective alternatives. For that very reason, internet should be classified, like other natural monopolies, as a utility. Moreover, last mile lines should be rentable or available through competitive bidding. There's actually enough dark cable to make some regional ISPs viable if they could actually get access to consumer level last mile lines. But Comcast won't get off them unless they're kicked off them. And if you try to build lines then Comcast will half their rates in the areas that you offer service in! Of course, Ajit Pai will have a lobbying job earning well north of 400K the moment the Trump administration runs out the door so it's really not his concern.
- ScottBurson 10y ago
  Yes, I have been inclined toward this view as well. But I would be interested to hear counterarguments.
- lupin_sansei 10y ago
  This was the argument against privatizing the telcos in Europe in the 80s. But once they did competition and innovation thrived. Classifying something as a utility leads to stagnation.
  - nitrogen 10y ago
    Unfortunately in the US the telcos and cable providers are already privatized, and have only continued to merge and grow larger. So we need something different from the current situation, whatever that may be.
    - ChefDenominator 10y ago
      The US telcos embed themselves into the local governments, keeping competition out. It's governments, all the way down.
      - ComradeTaco 10y ago
        That while Telco's do use regulatory capture well, you have to admit there's some sort of natural monopoly inherent to hard wired internet service.
        AnthonyMouse 10y ago
        The known solution to this is local loop unbundling, but the ISPs lobbied their way out of that more than a decade ago.
        ChefDenominator 10y ago
        This statement is usually made without any substantive evidence to support it, primarily because every monopoly, in practice, can only truly be a monopoly when the government mandates it. When firms are forced to compete on the open market, without the option of non-market strategies, someone will find a way to move in and compete. This is actually self-evident in the fact that these companies are actively engaging in non-market strategies. There would be no need to practice such tactics if they could simply hold a 'natural monopoly'. Others certainly disagree, but for me, this argument is the one I find most compelling.
LargeCompanies 10y ago
Well 5G internet service as I have read will become your home and wireless internet svc...all in one. That means you will then have st least four to five (att, Verizon, Comcast, sprint and T mobile) broadband providers to choose from. Sounds solid to me... one bill for my Internet on all my devices and lots of choice!
- nitrogen 10y ago
  Will we have 100mbit to gigabit speeds (needed for working from home or for households with more than one person) and no data caps in this scenario? Predictable latencies (needed for video conferencing and gaming)?
perseusprime11 10y ago
This quote from Marc Andreesen sums up why treating it as a utility may not make sense: "Because sewers and electricity are far more static markets than broadband. You don't shit 10x as much every 3 yrs." I don't understand the resistance to nationalizing the physical Infrastructure. This is exactly the kind of thing that makes sense for consumers. Because somebody famous once said Govt. is part of the problem, we don't even want to entertain this idea anymore.
- whoopdedo 10y ago
  > You don't shit 10x as much every 3 yrs. I buy a new house when I'm single. Three years later I'm married and have two kids. More new houses have been built in my neighborhood, and they all have families moving into them. I sure hope whoever laid the sewer pipes at year zero anticipated at least 10x capacity in three years.
  - maxerickson 10y ago
    On the other hand, 3 years from now, the typical house will have approximately the same sewer needs that it has now. What perseusprime11 is pointing out is that the typical house will consume much more broadband in a few years than it does now, not just the houses with carefully chosen stories.
    - pharrlax 10y ago
      I don't understand how this relates to whether broadband is a natural monopoly. Certainly it's one that demands more frequent upgrades, but that seems to be missing the point.
  - stordoff 10y ago
    I think the key part is _every_ 3 years. With the sewerage pipes, you can plan around the maximum capacity of the house, and the required capacity of the pipes will remain pretty much constant. You don't have the same upper limit on Internet capacity.
  - 10y ago
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
AnthonyMouse 10y ago
The view in the Forbes article is misinformed: > In the final months of the Wheeler FCC, the Commission rushed through orders re-regulating rates for enterprise data services, subjecting ISPs (and only ISPs) to a highly-restrictive privacy regime that upends the model of ad-supported free content, and flirted with banning free and sponsored mobile data services that consumers actually want. The reason the rules apply to only ISPs is that only ISPs are a natural monopoly. If you don't like gmail scanning your email there are sixty free alternatives that don't. ISPs have nothing to do with "ad supported free content", nor should they. And consumers "want" free everything, but that's not how "sponsored mobile data services" work. Instead they allow the ISP to charge high data fees while exempting their own offerings to disadvantage or ransom the competition. And if high data fees and destroying competition are the cost of "free", no consumer who actually understands that wants it.
lobster_johnson 10y ago
In Norway and many other European countries, aggressively regulated utilities and local loop unbundling has worked out very well. If you set up some kind of publicly accessible infrastructure such as mobile or fiber, you are obliged, by law, to provide equal access to any third party who wants to piggyback on your grid. Local players thrive by leasing the physical infrastructure and competing for consumers.
Bombthecat 10y ago
What diameter has a water pipe? 7 inch? Does it make sense to have like three of them going to the house?...
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- whyileft 10y ago
  In market capitalism we need at a least 2. Efficient, isn't it?
perlpimp 10y ago
really the gist of the problem from what I read is that alot of municipal governments have allowance for only one provider to access homes, so who comes first gets to play. So incumbents have been using this to gouge customers and deny competition. FCC is not really of help here, granted if you would have more competition at the ground level you would get more options like unencumbered access at a reasonable price.
snarfy 10y ago
> We need meaningful competition for broadband. It's a physical monopoly. It doesn't work that way with physical monopolies. We need regulation, just like we do with power and water.
chrishacken 10y ago
> We need meaningful competition for broadband. (I live in Silicon Valley and all I can get is Comcast!) I run an ISP. There's a reason for this. In order to compete, you need a viable business. Unless a competitor can obtain >40% market share, it's not worth the enormous costs of deploying new infrastructure. Competing with Comcast is one of the worst possible business strategies ever; they have limitless access to cash and if you try to compete on price you're going to lose. > If classifying broadband as a utility is the right way to accomplish this, let's keep it; otherwise, let's find a different way. I'm open to argument about the means, but not so much about the goal. I honestly don't think that's going to solve anything. We're obtaining "utility" status simply by offering voice service, that won't give us any kind of major advantage other than forcing our local government to be more willing to cooperate with us on infrastructure deployment.

ComradeTaco 10y ago

I disagree fundamentally with Ajit Pai's reasoning that minimal regulation will lead to innovation and lower consumer price. There are some industries that are natural monopolies, like water and electricity, because it's incredibly expensive to build both last mile connections and core infrastructure. They're also natural monopolies because you don't really have great, cost competitive alternatives to water and electricity provided on a large scale. When you consider hard wired internet, it bares of a lot of similarity to utilities, in the cost and difficulty of accumulating infrastructure and in the absence of effective alternatives. For that very reason, internet should be classified, like other natural monopolies, as a utility. Moreover, last mile lines should be rentable or available through competitive bidding. There's actually enough dark cable to make some regional ISPs viable if they could actually get access to consumer level last mile lines. But Comcast won't get off them unless they're kicked off them. And if you try to build lines then Comcast will half their rates in the areas that you offer service in! Of course, Ajit Pai will have a lobbying job earning well north of 400K the moment the Trump administration runs out the door so it's really not his concern.

ScottBurson 10y ago
Yes, I have been inclined toward this view as well. But I would be interested to hear counterarguments.
lupin_sansei 10y ago
This was the argument against privatizing the telcos in Europe in the 80s. But once they did competition and innovation thrived. Classifying something as a utility leads to stagnation.
- nitrogen 10y ago
  Unfortunately in the US the telcos and cable providers are already privatized, and have only continued to merge and grow larger. So we need something different from the current situation, whatever that may be.
  - ChefDenominator 10y ago
    The US telcos embed themselves into the local governments, keeping competition out. It's governments, all the way down.
    - ComradeTaco 10y ago
      That while Telco's do use regulatory capture well, you have to admit there's some sort of natural monopoly inherent to hard wired internet service.
      - AnthonyMouse 10y ago
        The known solution to this is local loop unbundling, but the ISPs lobbied their way out of that more than a decade ago.
      - ChefDenominator 10y ago
        This statement is usually made without any substantive evidence to support it, primarily because every monopoly, in practice, can only truly be a monopoly when the government mandates it. When firms are forced to compete on the open market, without the option of non-market strategies, someone will find a way to move in and compete. This is actually self-evident in the fact that these companies are actively engaging in non-market strategies. There would be no need to practice such tactics if they could simply hold a 'natural monopoly'. Others certainly disagree, but for me, this argument is the one I find most compelling.

LargeCompanies 10y ago

Well 5G internet service as I have read will become your home and wireless internet svc...all in one. That means you will then have st least four to five (att, Verizon, Comcast, sprint and T mobile) broadband providers to choose from. Sounds solid to me... one bill for my Internet on all my devices and lots of choice!

nitrogen 10y ago
Will we have 100mbit to gigabit speeds (needed for working from home or for households with more than one person) and no data caps in this scenario? Predictable latencies (needed for video conferencing and gaming)?

perseusprime11 10y ago

This quote from Marc Andreesen sums up why treating it as a utility may not make sense: "Because sewers and electricity are far more static markets than broadband. You don't shit 10x as much every 3 yrs." I don't understand the resistance to nationalizing the physical Infrastructure. This is exactly the kind of thing that makes sense for consumers. Because somebody famous once said Govt. is part of the problem, we don't even want to entertain this idea anymore.

whoopdedo 10y ago
> You don't shit 10x as much every 3 yrs. I buy a new house when I'm single. Three years later I'm married and have two kids. More new houses have been built in my neighborhood, and they all have families moving into them. I sure hope whoever laid the sewer pipes at year zero anticipated at least 10x capacity in three years.
- maxerickson 10y ago
  On the other hand, 3 years from now, the typical house will have approximately the same sewer needs that it has now. What perseusprime11 is pointing out is that the typical house will consume much more broadband in a few years than it does now, not just the houses with carefully chosen stories.
  - pharrlax 10y ago
    I don't understand how this relates to whether broadband is a natural monopoly. Certainly it's one that demands more frequent upgrades, but that seems to be missing the point.
- stordoff 10y ago
  I think the key part is _every_ 3 years. With the sewerage pipes, you can plan around the maximum capacity of the house, and the required capacity of the pipes will remain pretty much constant. You don't have the same upper limit on Internet capacity.
- 10y ago

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

AnthonyMouse 10y ago

The view in the Forbes article is misinformed: > In the final months of the Wheeler FCC, the Commission rushed through orders re-regulating rates for enterprise data services, subjecting ISPs (and only ISPs) to a highly-restrictive privacy regime that upends the model of ad-supported free content, and flirted with banning free and sponsored mobile data services that consumers actually want. The reason the rules apply to only ISPs is that only ISPs are a natural monopoly. If you don't like gmail scanning your email there are sixty free alternatives that don't. ISPs have nothing to do with "ad supported free content", nor should they. And consumers "want" free everything, but that's not how "sponsored mobile data services" work. Instead they allow the ISP to charge high data fees while exempting their own offerings to disadvantage or ransom the competition. And if high data fees and destroying competition are the cost of "free", no consumer who actually understands that wants it.

lobster_johnson 10y ago

In Norway and many other European countries, aggressively regulated utilities and local loop unbundling has worked out very well. If you set up some kind of publicly accessible infrastructure such as mobile or fiber, you are obliged, by law, to provide equal access to any third party who wants to piggyback on your grid. Local players thrive by leasing the physical infrastructure and competing for consumers.

Bombthecat 10y ago

What diameter has a water pipe? 7 inch? Does it make sense to have like three of them going to the house?...

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
whyileft 10y ago
In market capitalism we need at a least 2. Efficient, isn't it?

perlpimp 10y ago

really the gist of the problem from what I read is that alot of municipal governments have allowance for only one provider to access homes, so who comes first gets to play. So incumbents have been using this to gouge customers and deny competition. FCC is not really of help here, granted if you would have more competition at the ground level you would get more options like unencumbered access at a reasonable price.

snarfy 10y ago

> We need meaningful competition for broadband. It's a physical monopoly. It doesn't work that way with physical monopolies. We need regulation, just like we do with power and water.

chrishacken 10y ago

> We need meaningful competition for broadband. (I live in Silicon Valley and all I can get is Comcast!) I run an ISP. There's a reason for this. In order to compete, you need a viable business. Unless a competitor can obtain >40% market share, it's not worth the enormous costs of deploying new infrastructure. Competing with Comcast is one of the worst possible business strategies ever; they have limitless access to cash and if you try to compete on price you're going to lose. > If classifying broadband as a utility is the right way to accomplish this, let's keep it; otherwise, let's find a different way. I'm open to argument about the means, but not so much about the goal. I honestly don't think that's going to solve anything. We're obtaining "utility" status simply by offering voice service, that won't give us any kind of major advantage other than forcing our local government to be more willing to cooperate with us on infrastructure deployment.