4 ms·

Ajit Pai is extremely competent, except he enacts policies that you do not agree with. Listening to an interview with him, I could feel myself thinking that he

Ajit Pai is extremely competent, except he enacts policies that you do not agree with. Listening to an interview with him, I could feel myself thinking that he had a ton of valid points about the FCC and industry as a whole. And before I get called a shill, I disagree with many of his policies and am glad hes leaving the post.

TheOperator 6y ago
Yeah I've been exposed to Pai and the man certainly is more erudite than myself. My view on network neutrality at this point is the companies pushing for those laws were always more of a monopolizing threat than the ISPs ever were. Netflix and Google loved network neutrality because it saved them lots of cash and they ended up getting an "internet fast lane" Comcast couldn't dream of by installing a massive CDN across the globe. It seemed like policy that was supported mostly because it was pro-consumer and because honestly the ISPs are getting lots of taxpayer money.
- enragedcacti 6y ago
  > It seemed like policy that was supported mostly because it was pro-consumer and because honestly the ISPs are getting lots of taxpayer money. Am I getting wooshed or are these both great reasons to support this policy and thus oppose Ajit Pai?
  - x3n0ph3n3 6y ago
    It's almost as if there are good arguments on _both_ sides of the debate!
    - cultus 6y ago
      What are the benefits of abandoning net neutrality if you are not an ISP?
      - ocdtrekkie 6y ago
        In my personal case: I'd much rather be able to buy special-purpose cellular plans with limited/restricted capabilities. I'd really like to see more $5-10/mo. device plans that offer connectivity that isn't artificially speed-throttled to dialup speeds. For instance, for the computer in my car. If every single mobile network plan is legally required to support Netflix 4K and YouTube streaming, that's not workable from a business standpoint. And that's exactly Google and Netflix's goal: Require everything support their modern reincarnation of the boob tube.
        ashtonbaker 6y ago
        That doesn't make much sense to me - if the issue from an ISPs perspective is data volume, then why not just put a cap on data and remain content-agnostic? Doesn't that address the issue in a much more direct way? For example, if there is no data cap, but only a block on netflix.com, it seems that you could get around that using a VPN or something anyway.
        ocdtrekkie 6y ago
        I'd be perfectly fine with fully metered data plans at high speed: However, the same group of people who support net neutrality complain that data caps are also unfair. Notice that "unlimited data" is once again, however inaccurate as it is, nearly the only way to buy wireless service in 2020. I feel a very small group of companies are pushing an incredibly wasteful business model, because they aren't the ones paying for all of the waste. Google, Netflix, Spotify, etc. would rather you wirelessly stream content that makes... a lot more sense to store locally. And they're pushing things like streaming 4K... even when the cost/benefit of streaming 4K to a phone is questionable at best. We're all paying for the extreme network contention of 90% of available bandwidth going to these very wasteful business models. It's pretty unsurprising ISPs would like to charge extra for them, either towards consumers or the streaming providers themselves.
        ashtonbaker 6y ago
- zackees 6y ago
  Net neutrality never regulated Google/Facebook or the other social media tech giants. It only regulated the ISP which have never posed any threat to free on the internet. Net neutrality was only about shoving the costs of the internet infrastructure to the consumer. Net neutrality died, and all of the doom and gloom we were told would happened never materialized.
  - mundo 6y ago
    > In 2017, Pai voted with his fellow Republican commissioners to remove rules that prohibited internet providers from blocking or slowing traffic to particular sites and offering higher speed “lanes” at higher prices. Many major internet providers have not yet taken advantage of that rule change, however. It seems likely that this is because they consider the looser regulations likely to be overturned in Biden's presidency, not because they don't actually want to make changes they spent millions lobbying for the right to make.
- Dylan16807 6y ago
  > Netflix and Google loved network neutrality because it saved them lots of cash and they ended up getting an "internet fast lane" Comcast couldn't dream of by installing a massive CDN across the globe. Comcast could easily install CDN servers if they wanted. And everything related to Netflix and peering was ridiculous. Charging because the traffic is unbalanced, even though it's the ISP's customers requesting the data? What, they'd peer for free if netflix clients uploaded 5mbps of random data so that uplink and downlink are perfectly matched? So sure, Netflix and Google are a monopolistic threat in other areas. But when it comes to ISPs getting into conflicts, it's almost always the ISPs in the wrong.
brnt 6y ago
He's a good demonstration of why experts without ethics are problematic.
hungrygs 6y ago
Come on, Ajit Pai was regulatory capture at its worst. Now, as he always planned, he gets to go somewhere and collect his millions per year already furtively promised, until the next Republican administration.
- masonic 6y ago
  Pai was originally nominated to be FCC commissioner in 2011 by President Obama during his first term.

TheOperator 6y ago

Yeah I've been exposed to Pai and the man certainly is more erudite than myself. My view on network neutrality at this point is the companies pushing for those laws were always more of a monopolizing threat than the ISPs ever were. Netflix and Google loved network neutrality because it saved them lots of cash and they ended up getting an "internet fast lane" Comcast couldn't dream of by installing a massive CDN across the globe. It seemed like policy that was supported mostly because it was pro-consumer and because honestly the ISPs are getting lots of taxpayer money.

enragedcacti 6y ago
> It seemed like policy that was supported mostly because it was pro-consumer and because honestly the ISPs are getting lots of taxpayer money. Am I getting wooshed or are these both great reasons to support this policy and thus oppose Ajit Pai?
- x3n0ph3n3 6y ago
  It's almost as if there are good arguments on _both_ sides of the debate!
  - cultus 6y ago
    What are the benefits of abandoning net neutrality if you are not an ISP?
    - ocdtrekkie 6y ago
      In my personal case: I'd much rather be able to buy special-purpose cellular plans with limited/restricted capabilities. I'd really like to see more $5-10/mo. device plans that offer connectivity that isn't artificially speed-throttled to dialup speeds. For instance, for the computer in my car. If every single mobile network plan is legally required to support Netflix 4K and YouTube streaming, that's not workable from a business standpoint. And that's exactly Google and Netflix's goal: Require everything support their modern reincarnation of the boob tube.
      - ashtonbaker 6y ago
        That doesn't make much sense to me - if the issue from an ISPs perspective is data volume, then why not just put a cap on data and remain content-agnostic? Doesn't that address the issue in a much more direct way? For example, if there is no data cap, but only a block on netflix.com, it seems that you could get around that using a VPN or something anyway.
        ocdtrekkie 6y ago
        I'd be perfectly fine with fully metered data plans at high speed: However, the same group of people who support net neutrality complain that data caps are also unfair. Notice that "unlimited data" is once again, however inaccurate as it is, nearly the only way to buy wireless service in 2020. I feel a very small group of companies are pushing an incredibly wasteful business model, because they aren't the ones paying for all of the waste. Google, Netflix, Spotify, etc. would rather you wirelessly stream content that makes... a lot more sense to store locally. And they're pushing things like streaming 4K... even when the cost/benefit of streaming 4K to a phone is questionable at best. We're all paying for the extreme network contention of 90% of available bandwidth going to these very wasteful business models. It's pretty unsurprising ISPs would like to charge extra for them, either towards consumers or the streaming providers themselves.
        ashtonbaker 6y ago
zackees 6y ago
Net neutrality never regulated Google/Facebook or the other social media tech giants. It only regulated the ISP which have never posed any threat to free on the internet. Net neutrality was only about shoving the costs of the internet infrastructure to the consumer. Net neutrality died, and all of the doom and gloom we were told would happened never materialized.
- mundo 6y ago
  > In 2017, Pai voted with his fellow Republican commissioners to remove rules that prohibited internet providers from blocking or slowing traffic to particular sites and offering higher speed “lanes” at higher prices. Many major internet providers have not yet taken advantage of that rule change, however. It seems likely that this is because they consider the looser regulations likely to be overturned in Biden's presidency, not because they don't actually want to make changes they spent millions lobbying for the right to make.
Dylan16807 6y ago
> Netflix and Google loved network neutrality because it saved them lots of cash and they ended up getting an "internet fast lane" Comcast couldn't dream of by installing a massive CDN across the globe. Comcast could easily install CDN servers if they wanted. And everything related to Netflix and peering was ridiculous. Charging because the traffic is unbalanced, even though it's the ISP's customers requesting the data? What, they'd peer for free if netflix clients uploaded 5mbps of random data so that uplink and downlink are perfectly matched? So sure, Netflix and Google are a monopolistic threat in other areas. But when it comes to ISPs getting into conflicts, it's almost always the ISPs in the wrong.

brnt 6y ago

He's a good demonstration of why experts without ethics are problematic.

hungrygs 6y ago

Come on, Ajit Pai was regulatory capture at its worst. Now, as he always planned, he gets to go somewhere and collect his millions per year already furtively promised, until the next Republican administration.

masonic 6y ago
Pai was originally nominated to be FCC commissioner in 2011 by President Obama during his first term.