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FCC weakens net neutrality rule in a prelude to larger rollbacks
- pasbesoin 10y agoGoogle Fiber got to a couple of nearby communities before they put the brakes on. I'm left hoping that's close enough to branch out wireless service in short order. Otherwise, I'm left screwed, between an AT&T that refuses to upgrade its local network (and it's a dense, accessible, suburban neighborhood -- hardly the boonies), and a Comcast that has doubled its rates for basically the same service. Both with caps that will quickly look increasingly ridiculous in the face of the wider world of data transfer. We'll be back to them insisting on big bucks for assymmetric streaming of big-brand content, with increasing pressure to make that their content (a la data-cap exemptions, etc.)
- VonGuard 10y agoThis is the end. If we think this guy's gonna listen to the people, we're completely wrong.
- MrZongle2 10y agoThis is why getting laws passed, instead of relying on executive orders and the whims of bureaucrats in power at the time, is so crucial.
- dragonwriter 10y agoThe same faction that opposes net neutrality in the FCC also controls both Houses of Congress plus the White House, in fact, the change in the latter that completes that control is why they control the FCC, not an unrelated independent event. So laws would be no less vulnerable than FCC regulations.
- repiret 10y agoBut eight years ago, the opposing faction had even more control. They could have enshrined net neutrality in law then.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- dragonwriter 10y agoAnd then it could be repealed now. For the same reason the the FCC approach will be.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- Retric 10y agoThey have 'control' but can't get past a filibuster without risking having all their changes revoked the next time they lose control.
- spaced_out 10y agoThat's not going to happen as long as there are at least 40 Republicans in the senate. They used a filibuster to block a moderate Supreme Court nominee, you think they'll even consider allowing an internet reform bill to come to a vote?
- MrZongle2 10y agoHow ever did things get made into law in the past? Compromise. Something that neither of the two major parties seem interested in anymore. It is that, not the allocation of seats to a party in Congress, which is why things haven't gotten done.
- abootstrapper 10y agoThe Republicans are not interested in compromise. They've pulled the Dems so far right, they're practically center now.
- aanm1988 10y agoand then paint them all as crazy left wing idiots who want to censor everything. Then they whine that democrats are jerks when dems call them anything.
- superioritycplx 10y agoCalling names is fine. It's the violent riots that are getting annoying.
- jackmott 10y agogoing to be more and more of them until the people demand this president is gone.
- setpatchaddress 10y agoIndeed, the Democrats have been right of center for some time. Obamacare is essentially identical to plans previously proposed by Republicans.
- epistasis 10y agoYes, that might be good, but it's a pipe dream at the moment. Further, having congress deal with such issues is open to far more political manipulation. Having people who are competent at their job in regulatory positions seems just as important as having Congress do their job for them.
- draw_down 10y agoIt's not the end. Things are just degrading, boringly, as they have been.
- transfire 10y agoOh, it might just well happen. The engineers that actually make this stuff work generally know whats up, and if things start to turn too sour, just watch them bring the whole damn net to a screeching halt. It'll make the SOPA blackout of 2012 look like daylight.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- dopamean 10y agoWhy is the FCC against net neutrality?
- rc_bhg 10y agoRepublicans have control of Presidency and Congress.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- dragonwriter 10y agoThe Republican Party is against net neutrality and now controls a majority of seats on the FCC, hence, the FCC now opposes net neutrality. Since the issue really became a big deal, the FCC has been split on party lines over it.
- dopamean 10y agoThen why are Republicans against net neutrality? I suspect the answer is "money" and that the wrong people are greasing the right palms to get this done. If that really is the truth then why aren't companies in tech doing more of the same to protect their interests? How the hell is it that companies like Comcast have the upper hand here?
- arebop 10y agoComcast is/should be willing to spend the net present value of their future revenue streams to defend their monopoly. Ditto AT&T, Verizon, etc. The combined market cap of these companies is a pretty big lobbying bill to pay even for Apple, let alone Netflix. Google tried just building a competitive network but apparently they didn't have the stomach to combine network construction with lobbying at the necessary scale.
- Cshelton 10y agoYeah, Google realized just how entrenched the established telecom companies are with local municipalities. To the pint where the muni says, "only AT&T" can use OR put a pole in this area. Straight up block everyone else because AT&T pays the city to do that. How do you govern and take that on at a national scale. Not only the money, but the ridiculously massive amount of lobbying. I think wireless point to point is the answer, and what Google is working on now after buying WebPass. You only have to connect a neighborhood and have one pool with a p2p receiver that services the whole neighborhood. A mini ISP if you will. Then we can tell the corrupt city/local council people to F OFF and stop F'ing over your citizens by taking bribe deals from the large ISPs. It's pretty bad, see AT&T in Dallas, where they are head quartered. The corruption in the city that AT&T buys is crazy. Even another large competitor such as Spectrum wanting to put fiber down is blocked by the city because AT&T has exclusive rights. So what speed is offered in that area by AT&T? 3-6 fucking mbps. And they make you a great deal and only charge $30/m for it. Seriously, F them and the city. I now have a direct p2p internet access point on the roof of my house that gets about 80mbps up and down for less than $30/month. My only other option in a well developed, dense area is 3mbps from AT&T. A block away, Spectrum installed fiber and they get 1 gig speeds. I fought it for months, the corruption goes deep. Fuck AT&T.
- jerkstate 10y agoDoes anyone with a strong understanding of internetworking, peering and transit contract negotiation actually believe that "net neutrality" is possible? traffic shaping of saturated links seems like a necessary outcome to not undermine the smaller users (i.e. low bandwidth communications) that are impacted by heavy users (i.e. video streaming) if two peering parties can't come to terms on cost sharing for link upgrades.
- Karunamon 10y agoNet neutrality refers to packet shaping by source and destination. QoS refers to packet shaping by type of content.
- wtallis 10y agoI don't fully agree with those definitions. ISPs need to be prohibited from preferring HTTP and TCP over other protocols. They should be permitted to perform only the kinds of QoS that will treat two traffic flows with the same data rate and packet sizes equally even if they are using different protocols and port numbers. Overt discrimination rules that specify preferences for certain endpoints or certain types of traffic (as identified by inspecting packets) is wrong, but fair QoS that only considers actual traffic patterns and only operates in the event of actual congestion is beneficial without being harmfully discriminatory.
- Karunamon 10y agoISPs need to be prohibited from preferring HTTP and TCP over other protocols If anything, it would be the reverse.. HTTP and TCP (which doesn't care if its packets arrive out of order) getting deprioritized in the face of streaming content (which does). That kind of blows your restriction away. QoS under heavy load is the difference between everybody getting to use their apps and one or two people getting to use their apps. Thing is, there's no successful ISP in the world that has enough capacity to service maximum bandwidth from all of their customers at the same time. There's always going to be a fudge factor worked in, and QoS to help out when that goes wrong.
- beatpanda 10y agoHow long until access to the open internet costs extra?
- wmf 10y agoNever; ISPs are much cleverer than that. As long as neutrality advocates are fighting the last battle ISPs will run circles around them.
- JustSomeNobody 10y ago5 years. Everything is always 5 years away.
- wtallis 10y agoIf you want a publicly accessible IP address without an ISP-imposed firewall blocking incoming connections on at least some ports, then it already costs extra, and has for a long time. For the most part, we're already getting just WWW (client not server) access plus a handful of other approved services. What we're facing in the future is difficulty even getting unrestrained access to the whole WWW.
- woah 10y agoI asked this in another thread a few days ago, but why are edge servers and CDNs not a violation of "net neutrality"? If you've got an edge server on an ISP, and are paying extra for a leased line from your main data center to that server, you are effectively paying the ISP an additional fee for priority over other traffic on their hardware.
- grandalf 10y agoTo the end customer it's not priority, consider the two cases: customer: GET www.site.com/images/rounded_corner.gif first hop to ISP, then n hops to www.site.com vs GET cdn001.site.com/images/rounded_corner.gif first hop to ISP, then second hop to cdn001 The overhead takes place in the routing mechanism, not in the prioritization mechanism. In both cases, it costs the ISP the same amount to send the data back to the customer. The data is not prioritized, it just happens to be available in fewer hops, which is often (but is not necessarily) faster. A CDN could exist that imposed greater latency in exchange for an improvement elsewhere, such as reliability.
- subverter 10y agoThis raises the limit on the number of subscribers a provider can have before regulation kicks in. In other words, a larger number of smaller providers have one less regulation to worry about. Isn't more competition among providers what we want? Shouldn't we be doing everything we can – even if it's saving 6.8 hours per year in regulatory compliance – to help these smaller guys be able to take on these horrible behemoths like AT&T and Comcast?
- frgtpsswrdlame 10y agoThose 6.8 hours are spent making information public which is important to consumer choice. This move doesn't help competition, it harms it.
- subverter 10y agoI think you're making an assumption that shouldn't be assumed: that these smaller providers won't voluntarily be transparent and open. If I were competing against the likes of AT&T and Comcast, I'd use that as a competitive advantage! They're trying to differentiate themselves from the incumbents, not be exactly the same. But even if they weren't open and transparent, wouldn't technologists like ourselves push to find the limits and publish them online? We can hold them accountable just as well without piling on more regulation.
- frgtpsswrdlame 10y agoAT&T and Comcast are required to report this information because they are large. So providing the data would not differentiate small from large companies. Furthermore, if small providers will voluntarily provide information, what is the point of getting rid of the regulation? Beyond that, maybe you can find me some examples of companies which are under the previous 100,000 threshhold which do provide this information? That would be a great boon to your point. >But even if they weren't open and transparent, wouldn't technologists like ourselves push to find the limits and publish them online? We can hold them accountable just as well without piling on more regulation. Or we could just make the company itself spend time equivalent to less than 1 work day of 1 individual and get all the data... "Piling on regulation" makes it sound as if this is incredibly burdensome which it's not. It's basically zero work from the perspective of the company. I'd like to say that I'm basically always in support of forcing companies to publish more consumer-relevant information. Remember that the perfectly-competitive model requires that consumers have perfect information. More information means more informed choices means more quality competition.
- nicnash08 10y agoIts interesting to consider how many of these comments are fake
- guelo 10y agoI hate these types of articles that provide extensive quotes and even a screenshot of part of the pdf, but refuse to link to the actual documents. It's probably an advertising thing where they don't want people to leave the site. The actual statements are available here https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-addresses-unnecessary-accounting-requirements-carriers https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-addresses-unnecessary-accou...
- smnscu 10y ago... and also plenty of links to their own articles!
- jocose 10y agoLook like the date is wrong at the start of the article. http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2017/db0223/DOC-343610A1.pdf http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2017...
- devindotcom 10y agoYou're quite right. Normally I'm pretty good about that. (At least, I remembered today: https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/24/fcc-prepares-to-pull-broadband-privacy-rules-adopted-last-year/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/24/fcc-prepares-to-pull-broad...) This article went through several revisions as I did research so the original opening couple paragraphs and links got lost in the shuffle. I've added the link back in.
- mulmen 10y agoWow, thank you for this response. An author responding to a comment on their article seems rare in my eyes. Do you think this kind of commentary should happen on the TC website instead of a third party site? Do you think Facebook comments are conducive to constructive commentary on your articles?
- devindotcom 10y agoPersonally I see no sense in trying to contain discussion on-site rather than here, on Facebook, or reddit etc. People want to discuss things in the community of their choosing. Better to intelligently collate and sort those conversations. I wrote about it here if you're curious: http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/13/shouts-and-murmurations/ http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/13/shouts-and-murmurations/
- seibelj 10y agoI know several people who are highly involved with the FCC, telecom industry, and telecom law that think that "network neutrality" is just 2 words. Until 1970, and only because of lawsuits, it was illegal to connect anything to your phone line. You could get any phone you wanted from Ma Bell as long as it was black.[0] If you wanted a different color you had to pay extra. It took force to make Ma Bell and the FCC allow you to plug in your own phone, your own computer, etc. The FCC supports monopolies, if you want competition you should applaud the deregulation of telecom. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_500_telephone#Ownership_and_AT.26T_divestiture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_500_telephone#Ownership_...
- frgtpsswrdlame 10y agoHow do you imagine the deregulation in this article will help competition? Specifically, that is.
- seibelj 10y agoBy allowing upstart MVNO's to avoid arduous regulation processes. I am involved with 2 MVNO's that have been trying to merge for over a year, they don't have that many customers, and no one opposes it. Yet the FCC dragged their feet with no updates and no reason for the delay. This has real world, multi-million dollar consequences. The process is moving forward now since Ajit got hired. Armchair technologists read an article about net neutrality on arstechnica and think it's black and white. News flash - telecom and ISP's have been shaping traffic since the beginning! You think NetFlix has high quality video on shitty connections because they are nice? Wrong! They pay for the privilege.[0] I say, let the free market decide. The history of telecom is beyond insane. If you actually care about this stuff maybe you should learn more. This book is pretty esoteric but it gives the true history https://www.amazon.com/Great-Telecom-Meltdown-Fred-Goldstein/dp/1580539394 https://www.amazon.com/Great-Telecom-Meltdown-Fred-Goldstein... [0]https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304834704579401071892041790 https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304834704579401...
- frgtpsswrdlame 10y ago
- rocky1138 10y agoCan't we just create our own local Intranets using Ethernet cables running around cul-de-sacs? Mine connects to yours which connects to his which connects to hers. Eventually we'll have formed a network.
- Asooka 10y agoThat's how a lot of ISPs in eastern europe started - string cable along dense neighbourhoods by just letting it hang off any nearby pole, trees, or along steel cables strung between two close buildings with no poles or trees around. I imagine building regulation codes are more strictly enforced in USA and will stop that kind of thing.
- JustSomeNobody 10y agoYes. Then eventually someone will come along and say, "i'll do it for you for a fee" and they'll get a bunch of customers and they'll own the cables and then rename themselves Comcast.
- rocky1138 10y agoHow about we make it a rule that if anyone wants access to the network they are not allowed to charge for it. It must be done only to help grow the network for its own sake.
- JustSomeNobody 10y agoSomeone will sue and then laws will be made. Whoever has the most money/best lawyers will win.
- wav-part 10y agoIs not net-neutrality better handled by IANA ? If you are going to call your router "internet", you must treat all IP packets equally. Seems like reasonable terms to me. Afterall this is the property that made Internet what it is today.
- wmf 10y agoIANA has no enforcement authority. I also wouldn't be surprised to see ISPs respond by simply removing the word "Internet" from their advertising.
- fallingfrog 10y agoI suppose one way to enforce net neutrality might be to route all traffic through TOR.. that might mess up the caching for a service like Netflix though. (Could someone who knows more than I do comment on that?)
- amazon_not 10y agoTor does not help against net neutrality violations. Tor only helps if you want some anonymity for your traffic.
- ryandrake 10y agoArticle didn't load for me: ERROR: TechCrunch is not part of your Internet Service Basic Web pack. For an extra $29.99 a month you can upgrade to Internet Service Extreme, offering access to over 50 more web sites!
- lacroix 10y agoThe FCC won't let me be
- boona 10y agoIf Trump also continues with his plan to deregulate as well, I'm of the opinion that this is great news. This could make Google Fiber and other similar undertakings much more viable. It always gives me the hibby-jeebies when government takes strong control over an industry. This is especially true in the case of the FCC where their original mandate went from regulating airwaves, to regulating the content of said airwaves.
- TheGRS 10y agoI'm not sure how federal deregulations would help cities install more fiber, are there any federal regulations that would impede them? I always thought the issue was more around infrastructure monopolies in each city. Its not like new fiber companies can just lay their own lines down, they need to work through the city to get permission to put new lines in or share existing lines.
- boona 10y agoHmm, that's a good question. It's not clear to me at what level of government the most stifling regulations are. I had also read that they wanted to offer phone services for free, but they dropped those due to the incredibly high regulations in that field as well. https://www.cnet.com/news/google-to-government-let-us-build-a-faster-net/ https://www.cnet.com/news/google-to-government-let-us-build-...
- wtallis 10y agoThat article shows Google wanting new regulations imposed in some areas (forcing local governments and utilities to accommodate Google), but not wanting relief from net neutrality regulations.
- boona 10y ago> That article shows Google wanting new regulations imposed in some areas Where did you get that? Kevin Lo from Google is quoted as saying "Regulations tied to physical infrastructure sometimes defer the investment altogether". Are you saying that in reference to something else?
- morgzilla 10y agoI can see how a bit of outrage about this is how the NRA got to the place it is today. This by itself isn't that meaningful, but anything can be politicized, turn public opinion and gain momentum. That's why the NRA's position is to say NO to any kind of gun regulation, because they know that's how you ensure guns are made available and gun culture is for sure secure. In the tech community I see people rising up against any kind of movement against net neutrality. And I do not want to see it erode. But I worry that by becoming averse to any reversal, any compromise, the communities stance will eventually be so politicized that it is just another part of the unreasonable and ultra biased political landscape that grinds progress to a halt.
- smallnamespace 10y agoThe thing about democracy based on mass mobilization of different interest groups is that no negotiation or compromise is possible, because leaderless groups are incapable of doing anything so complex. Compromises only happen person to person between strong leaders or between small groups of elites that both groups accept -- "Only Nixon could go to China". But for the last 30 years, both the left and the right (for both good and bad reasons) have been tearing down the very idea of legitimate elite authority, whether it's from politicians, academics, or anyone else. Who today has the moral standing to make reasonable compromises that everyone would accept?
- wtallis 10y agoThere are pros and cons to gun ownership; it both contributes to and harms the public good. Net neutrality is a more lopsided issue—the arguments against net neutrality are all about legalizing extortion and promoting a tragedy of the commons, or else they're non-specific arguments against regulation of any kind. Taken on its own and rationally, the net neutrality issue is much less amenable to producing a permanent stalemate than gun control. Existing political factions can incorporate positions on net neutrality into their existing political stalemate, but outside of such a context it's pretty easy to see that holes in net neutrality like the one here are absurd—why should smaller monopolies have more leeway to abuse their customers than large monopolies?
- 10y ago
- tomelders 10y agoUndersandly, the conversation in here revolves around the technicalities and semantics of net neutrality. But this isn't an issue of technology. It's a political issue, or worse, an ideological issue. It's not about the empirical truths of net neutrality, or the collective intent of those who created, and those who continue to develop the technology that has woven itself into the fabric of humanity. It's about idealouges imposing their ideals on every facet of our lives, regardless of the facts. The sad fact is, this is yet another grim attack on net neutrality by nefarious agents who see the web as something to be dominated and bent to their will exclusivley for political and economic gain. Like it or not, the work we do is going to become highly politicised. Are we ready for this? Do we have the moral fortitude to resist the influence that fuzzy, sloppy, and emotive politics seeks to have on our discussions? I think back to how we handled the Brendan Eich debacle. I (regretfully) came down on the punitive side of that argument. And I participated in that debate with a level of anger and vitriol that embarrasses me now. But whichever side you took, there's no doubt that for a brief moment we were deeply divided. The Brendan Eich story was a flash in the pan compared to what is about to happen. Should we engage in political debate, or should we avoid it? Can we buck the trend and participate in political debate in way that doesn't tear us apart, or should we ignore it as it happens around us and impacts upon our lives and work? Or is there a path between the extremes, where we can be neither ignorant to our political leanings nor beholden to them? I don't dare offer any advice on how we should prepare ourselves for what is about to come, I just hope we can all think about how we hope to respond before it happens. One thing I will say though, being someone prone to highly emotional reactions in all aspects of my life; developing software in teams has taught me the value of "strong opinions, weakly held".
- intended 10y agoI think the tech industry and HN crowd are waking up too late, and this might be because of the previous HN cultural wave. Initially HN was like the slashdot crows, in that it was geeky and making money of being entrepreneurial was an ideal, and not a way of life. Eventually that changed as the culture shifted to enabling and succeeding in startups. A lot of the meta culture and crowd is now many steps away from the old hacker roots and far closer to the entrepreneur /wanterpreneur group. This latter group really isn't in it to get into a political battle, and it makes no sense to get involved in a waste of time. As a result achieving critical mass, or uniting people under political oriented architectures won't happen soon enough. Maybe it's time to head back to /. ?
- transfire 10y agoThis issue could well turn out to be Trump's Achilles heal. If they go too far, the engineers that actually make the Internet work can easily bring the whole shebang down in protest -- and the world is so addicted to the Internet at this point the outrage would be deafening. And if Trump is too proud to back down...
- Crye 10y agoLet me put my hat in the ring here. Deregulation of access to consumers will result in cheaper internet and most likely faster internet speeds. However, it will concentrate power to those who already have it. Large ISPs will charge heavy bandwidth companies and only the largest heavy bandwidth companies will be able to afford the fees. Those heavy bandwidth companies paying the fees will recoup the money through advertising. Remember newspapers and large TV media companies make the majority of their money through advertising. When companies rely on advertising, the users are no longer the customers. They are the product. Further protecting the companies which rely on advertising will allow those companies to focus less on the customers and more on the advertisers. Companies relying on the allegiance of advertising will naturally shape their political standing to views of the advertisers. Remember also that advertisers are not paying for just eyeballs, but they are all paying for control. If a company starts moving away from their advertisers' political ideology they will lose revenue. Net Neutrality will ultimately give more control to companies that already hold power. Just my two cents...
- jackmott 10y agoI would amend that to say it may result in the illusion of cheaper internet. Your internet bill will go down, but services on the internet you use will either get more expensive, or degrade (as with adding advertisements).
- Crye 10y agoLet me put my hat in the ring here. Deregulation of access to consumers will result in cheaper internet and most likely faster internet speeds. However, it will concentrate power to those who already have it. Large ISPs will charge heavy bandwidth companies and only the largest heavy bandwidth companies will be able to afford the fees. Those heavy bandwidth companies paying the fees will recoup the money through advertising. Remember newspapers and large TV media companies make the majority of their money through advertising. When companies rely on advertising, the users are no longer the customers. They are the product. Further protecting the companies which rely on advertising will allow those companies to focus less on the customers and more on the advertisers. Companies relying on the allegiance of advertising will naturally shape their political standing to views of the advertisers. Remember also that advertisers are not paying for just eyeballs, but they are all paying for control. If a company starts moving away from their advertisers' political ideology they will lose revenue. Net Neutrality will ultimately give more control to companies that already hold power. Just my two cents...
- bobbington 10y agoLeave it alone. Stop demonizing the companies that give Internet.
- bobbington 10y agoInternet is plenty fast. Companies need to disclose what they are doing to customers, but government shouldn't regulate it
- Pica_soO 10y agoI wish we had a slow, but high bandwith alternative to the web in public hands. The problem is the infrastructure.. if there was a way to create a gnu add-hoc wifi network between every home hotspot - at least within a city, the web neutrality could be restored.
- rebase 10y agoI'd like to add the only optimistic response I can think of. The only benefit of deregulation is the opportunity for disruption of monopolies. Especially so in a landscape of tech. If provider A starts providing terrible bandwidth, incredibly high prices, and terrible service, it means that that provider X has a lucrative opportunity to provide better bandwidth, better prices, and great service. I hope these rules aren't used to help entrenched monopolies, but provide an ripe opportunity for the space to innovate. I hope these rules will be on the wrong side of history, but there is little stopping anyone from using the free market to their advantage.