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I'm all in favour of treating Internet access as the "fourth utility". It's clear it's become almost as essential to modern life as electricity. I do however f

• ardit33 9y ago
  You must be young? I remember a time when you couldn't text to other carrier, while Europe had it since the 90s. I remember how your carrier would not let you use facetime/skype etc.... Anyway, you are paying for access to internet and you should have it. This is akin to letting a private entity building a private highway on a public ground, and the owner of the highway can say: Only Audis and BMWs are allowed here...
  • oceanplexian 9y ago
    It's not "public ground". Electric companies and utilities acquire a mixture of easements, most of which are actually private, and listed on a property title.
    • ardit33 9y ago
      Almost all copper/fiber/etc pass through public roads at some point (or beneath them to be more exact), so yes they are using public grounds for their infrastructure. Same with your gas/electric/water line While "Wireless" provides are given PUBLIC spectrum to use for their business (they pay for it, but that's besides the point). So yes, 99% of internet out there uses some public areas at some point.
      • mandelbulb 9y ago
        There is no point mentioning public ground in the analogy, better say, for access to public transit, which represents the internet.
• lumisota 9y ago
  Title II was only introduced as a result of the Open Internet Order (from 2010) being overturned. Net neutrality principles have been sanctioned by the FCC since 2005; removing title II designation and moving away from these principles is a shift that should not be understated.
  • cletus 9y ago
    Actually Title II dates back to 1934.
    • lumisota 9y ago
      Sorry; I (and presumably your original comment) meant the designation of Internet service providers as common carriers under Title II. This designation was applied in 2015.
      • joshAg 9y ago
        ISPs were Title II until 2005 when Michael Powell, the Republican FCC chairman who was appointed by George Bush, reclassified the ISPs as Title 1 as part of the Republican plan to spur internet growth in the US via deregulation. (What we now call) Net neutrality violations followed soon after, but weren't widely reported until 2007 at which point people belatedly realized that Comcast had been violating net neutrality since 2005.
        • kgermino 9y ago
          Can you give example of those violations? (And possibly what resulted of them) Honestly asking, my memory of new events from that era is somewhat hazy.
          • joshAg 9y ago
            https://www.freepress.net/blog/2017/04/25/net-neutrality-violations-brief-history https://www.freepress.net/blog/2017/04/25/net-neutrality-vio... What resulted were a bunch of efforts to let ISPs remain Title I but still allow the FCC to enforce net neutrality on them. They failed because the ISPs would sue the FCC over each successive plan/rules. The last case was Verizon vs the FCC and in that case the judge said the FCC could enforce net neutrality if and only if it classified the ISPs as Title II instead of as Title I. The FCC then took a couple years trying to find a way around this, but ultimately decided in 2015 to jsut reclassify the ISPs as Title II, because they couldn't find any other way to enforce net neutrality while keeping the ISPs classified as Title I. PS: >>>> VERIZON: During oral arguments in Verizon v. FCC in 2013, judges asked whether the phone giant would favor some preferred services, content or sites over others if the court overruled the agency’s existing open internet rules. Verizon counsel Helgi Walker had this to say: “I’m authorized to state from my client today that but for these rules we would be exploring those types of arrangements.” Walker’s admission might have gone unnoticed had she not repeated it on at least five separate occasions during arguments.
• zer00eyz 9y ago
  > This is called an overbuild and is rather wasteful given the capex involved. Wasn't the original phone system vastly over built and that is the reason that things like DSL were possible without having to run new wiring in many homes?
  • cletus 9y ago
    An overbuild in this context would be a whole separate network, which the US typically has in most places, namely the phone network and a cable provider. Nowadays people tend to exclude the phone network from discussions of broadband as ADSL speeds are inferior to cable (let alone fiber). Phone lines had a filter on them to only pass through voice range frequencies. It's why you could hear the sounds made by a modem (or a fax for that matter). These were simply working around the filter. xDSL was a result of removing that filter. Or, rather, moving it into the customer premises so instead of 2-3kHz, the copper line could support frequencies into the MHz range. ADSL has a speed limit that follows an inverse square law to the distance the line travels to the exchange. Under ~1km ADSL2+ can get 20+ Mbps. At about 6km ADSL/ADSL2/ADSL2+ all cap out at about ~1.5Mbps and much beyond that it doesn't work at all. 4-5km is a typical average distance for a phone line, putting the max speed in the 5-8Mbps range. Pretty good for the early 2000s. Not so great now. There are various workarounds for this, most notably reducing the copper distance. In Australia, the NBN (in part) uses FttN (fiber to the node) so Exchange -> fiber -> Node -> copper -> Customer. Limit the copper distance to 1.5km and put VDSL2 on it and you can get closer to 100Mbps.
    • milankragujevic 9y ago
      fyi over VDSL2 you can get 25/2 at 1200m of copper.
• jayess 9y ago
  So far today I've learned that a two year old policy being repealed is anti-gay, will stop women from getting abortions, will stop the black lives matter movement from speaking freely, and will prevent the #metoo movement from growing. Yes, all because the internet before 2015 was completely censored and prevented free speech. If anything, I've seen a significant rise in censorship since NN was passed. The hyperbole today is just off the charts sad.
  • AFNobody 9y ago
    It isn't two years old. Its been a heavily disputed area of law/regulation since 1996 with various patchworks that served similar functions. From actual regulation, to threatening to regulate if there was too much backlash, to regulating again, to regulating under Title 2. 1996 Telecommunication Act: It was a legal gray area, particularly given dial up / dsl over telephone lines. 2002: FCC exempts NCTA by declaring it an information service, not telecommunications. 2005: NCTA wins at the Supreme Court Open Internet Principles: 2005-2010 (i.e. Threatening to regulate) Open Internet Order: 2010-2015 (Regulating, legally overturned) Regulatory framework repealed today: 2015-2017 ------------------ "If anything, I've seen a significant rise in censorship since NN was passed." Censorship by whom? A bunch of websites that are completely separate entities from ISPs that are monopolies for all intents and purposes?
    • jayess 9y ago
      'Censorship by whom? A bunch of websites that are completely separate entities from ISPs that are monopolies for all intents and purposes?' Yes, those same web sites that are breathlessly telling me today the repealing NN is a mortal threat to my very existence, who then turn around and engage in censorship themselves.
      • AFNobody 9y ago
        I would suggest you could create your own replacement for the sites that offend you. Free market competition exists for websites and there is probably a market for it if you are upset about it.
• AFNobody 9y ago
  > I do however find the doom and gloom prognostications around Title II repeal to be incredibly hyperbolic and unhelpful. Fact is, Title II was only introduced in 2015. It's not like repeal in 2017 is going to end the Internet overnight. So when you say "it was only introduced in 2015", what you really mean is "it was a heavily disputed situation for 20 years in with multiple court cases being won and lost by ISPs". So yeah, this is the first time the regulatory framework is basically _gone_ even if it wasn't "Title II". 1996 Telecommunication Act: It was a legal gray area, particularly given dial up / dsl over telephone lines. 2002: FCC exempts NCTA by declaring it an information service, not telecommunications. 2005: NCTA wins at the Supreme Court Open Internet Principles: 2005-2010 (i.e. Threatening to regulate) Open Internet Order: 2010-2015 (Regulating, legally overturned) Regulatory framework repealed today: 2015-2017
  • cletus 9y ago
    Again, hyperbolic. Some action against Comcast throttling/blocking BitTorrent (in 2007-2009) ultimately resulted in action by the FCC in 2010, made rather toothless in 2014 with the provisions against blocking and throttling struck down. So between 2010-2014 and 2015-2017 we have ~6 years of regulation, with the ISPs fighting it all the way (surprise surprise). Just to clarify: I'm in agreement that we need net neutrality. I've just been around the block enough times to know that the FCC's latest action just isn't the end of the world.
    • dragonwriter 9y ago
      > Some action against Comcast throttling/blocking BitTorrent (in 2007-2009) ultimately resulted in action by the FCC in 2010 Comcast wasn't the only enforcement action under the 2005-2010 case-by-case approach. (The first was the Madison River VoIP blocking case, in 2005.)
    • kelnos 9y ago
      > Just to clarify: I'm in agreement that we need net neutrality. I've just been around the block enough times to know that the FCC's latest action just isn't the end of the world. That's contradictory. Either we don't need net neutrality, and we're all being silly caring, or we do need net neutrality, and the ruckus is justified. I don't see how we could need net neutrality, have it just be repealed, but be told that it's no big deal and we should just go about our business and not care. I agree it's not the end of the world, in the sense that now ISPs will start to behave badly again, and either Congress or the FCC will be forced to act/backpedal (of course, after a lot of harm has already been done), or, at worst, we'll have to wait for a sane administration to be in office to restore some regulation. But that doesn't mean it's not a big deal right now.
• wpietri 9y ago
  > It actually doesn't make much sense to build multiple last-mile networks. This is called an overbuild and is rather wasteful given the capex involved. Yes, obviously. Just like roads. Which is why local governments should design and operate all residential internet networks. Or: Yes, obviously. A house really only needs one electrified wire, which is why we should turn over internet service to the power company. Or: Yes, obviously. We don't want an internet that's wasteful in any part of its operations, which is why it should be run entirely by the federal government. In fact, it's about communications, so let's combine it with the USPS. Or: Yes, obviously. Given its vital role in society and its origins as a DARPA project, it should be entirely built and operated by the US Army. On the other hand, maybe what we need is a proper market in internet connectivity, with multiple providers using different technologies and approaches to meet consumer needs, and a strong regulator that keeps large companies from driving the small ones under. As somebody who lives in one of the few competitive ISP markets in the US and pays $50/month for my gigabit home fiber connection, I think I prefer the latter.
  • EGreg 9y ago
    They have this in France. They make ISPs share the lines and compete on their plans to send bits over those lines. If a line is upgraded, they share the cost.
    • wpietri 9y ago
      Yeah, there are many good ways to do this. The US had a similar program up until 2005 where local phone companies had to allow ISPs to rent access to their last-mile wiring at mandatory rates. I like the idea, but I don't think it's practical in the US given business culture and the responsiveness of politicians to lobbying dollars.
      • notyourday 9y ago
        That's not the way it worked. The access was provided only to dry pairs ( think alarm wires) for DSL if the carriers had unused dry pairs ( they did not ). To do that, one needed to colocate in a certain number of COs ( large ), take at least a rack per CO ( $2.5K-5K ) even if one had only ONE subscriber. The rack was placed into a special area of CO (so only some COs had them - there was no requirement to build out that area ) and finally in order to terminate anything out of that rack one needed to buy a crazy expensive service from the CO carrier ( think $10-15k/mo ) to get a DS3 or OC3 out. This meant that absolutely no sane ISP could really afford to do this as there would be no customers wanting to pay hundreds of dollars a month for IP service. ISP DSL access was a replacement for T1s selling for $1.5K/mo between loop and IP, not for residential. There was no requirement to share fiber builds.
• lobster_johnson 9y ago
  One reason to be in the doom and gloom camp is that we now have an administration and an FCC that is openly hostile to net neutrality. The previous FCC was engaged in multiple rulings (against Comcast and others) in favour of neutrality, long before the Title II classification. There's every indication that, if presented with similar complaints in the future, the current FCC will not make similar rulings.
• jack9 9y ago
  > Title II was only introduced in 2015 It was treated as such prior to that, implicitly (without the force of law). Policy was established to enforce it, formally. It wasn't just "introduced", it was tacitly accepted until there were known bad actors, because there was an expectation that acting in opposition would birth policy (it did). Pretending that traffic was treated equally before and after, is just another piece of mischaracterization. A piece that is used to distract from, and minimize, the problems with removing the policy.
• jethro_tell 9y ago
  Washington has also stated that it will put something in place.
• thesagan 9y ago
  Maybe we should consider "overbuilding" then. Otherwise it just should be a public utility that leases bandwidth to private entities.
• int_19h 9y ago
  I'm also in the pro-NN camp, and have been for a very long time, and my observations match yours: the pro-NN propaganda this year is definitely a lot more about hype and emotions than it is about facts. I think it's really just because it was successfully made into a mainstream political issue. So now you have to appeal to the mass audience, not just IT nerds; and we're just seeing the same tactics that is routinely used to whip up support (or opposition) to other stuff. I'm actually weirdly uncomfortable about this. It's like being the guy who has cried wolf for many years, and now half of the village is there with you; but you see them pointing at rocks, logs etc, and insisting that these are all wolves, and we're all going to die now. It really made me question just how many people who happen to share my political positions, do so because they genuinely understand and agree with the policies, and not because it's just what you're supposed to do when you have a certain identity (liberal etc).
  • smallnamespace 9y ago
    And yet the temptation to extract rents from content providers is higher than it has ever been. Just look at the market capitalization of Netflix today, which is about 20x compared to 2010. I just can't imagine that ISPs won't make a grab for revenues, otherwise why spend money to lobby against NN? They're probably just waiting for the current furor to die down and sneak it in without people noticing.
    • indubitable 9y ago
      That already happened, in 2014. Netflix made agreements with Comcast/Time Warner/AT&T/Verizon. I think it will be interesting to see what happens now. I imagine the ISPs already feel they're very near the peak price:demand curve for consumers. Their monopoly is such that customers can't really say no unless they're willing to go with no access. So I'd agree that if there was going to be a squeeze it'd be on other large companies. But that also opens up the door to a far more motivated Google Fiber. And the lack of net neutrality opens up some interesting things - for instance a Netflix arrangement with an upstart ISP could offer free access at ultra-premium speeds to Netflix. That is something that the current monopolists could not necessarily match. Should be interesting to see how this plays out.
• garfieldnate 9y ago
  In the AMA we had with the New York State attorney, he said that the title II regulation came about because the courts struck down the usage of title I for the same thing. So we haven't actually had much experience with unregulated ISPs at this point.