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Maybe Wheeler's plan is to keep making confusing nonsensical statements until we get fed up with him and stop paying attention. Seriously, it seems like the FC

Maybe Wheeler's plan is to keep making confusing nonsensical statements until we get fed up with him and stop paying attention. Seriously, it seems like the FCC just can't be clear about what it is they actually plan to implement. Just reclassify broadband as a 'telecommunications service' already. The court in Verizon v. FCC said the FCC had the authority to reclassify. So do it and stop wasting everyone's time with your vague contradictory incomprehensible statements.

dragonwriter 12y ago
> Seriously, it seems like the FCC just can't be clear about what it is they actually plan to implement. The FCC is very clear that they haven't entirely decided what they "plan to implement" in complete detail. They have formally adopted something that is both an outline and a call for public input with specific questions on both the outline itself and alternatives to it (including specific questions related to Title II classification), and on how best to fill in details within the outline. > Just reclassify broadband as a 'telecommunications service' already. Doing so is a basis for regulation which has its own constraints distinct from those for regulation of information services, and deciding to do that doesn't, in and of itself, resolve the details of how to regulate. The FCCs recent call for comments specifically invites comments on that alternative, and details of how commenters see that alternative compared to the proposed outline (including details of how regulations under that authority should be crafted to acheive the broad policy goals that the FCC's Open Internet work is designed to serve.)
NoMoreNicksLeft 12y ago
I won't defend Wheeler, he's a jackass. However, no one else anywhere seems to be telling the truth. And we're never going to arrive at a solution that everyone enjoys or thinks fair if we continue to chant internet activist slogans. In 1997, peering worked because we need a simple solution whereby dozens of private companies could hook their networks together without going through the complicated accounting of who owed who how much. Most networks sent as much as they received, there was little point in nitpicking the slight differences. In 2014, this may not be the case. Level3 wants to send much more traffic to Comcast than Comcast would ever send to Level3. This is because Netflix (a Level3 customer) is asymmetric in nature. Why is Comcast obligated to do this for free? Comcast doesn't offer its customers "Netflix service". Indeed, if it did, people would go crazy screaming net neutrality slogans. Comcast offers internet service, and they don't guarantee access to Netflix especially when Netflix doesn't bother to acquire sufficient network connectivity. This doesn't mean Netflix is evil. It doesn't mean that Comcast is anything other than evil. But Comcast does feel cheated if they're forced to pay for the upgrades, and Netflix feels cheated if they're forced to pay for the upgrades (even though they are the ones who benefit from this). This means that peering in general may not work anymore. That is the real problem that no one seems smart enough to address. And if it does not work, what replaces it? So if you're suggesting Wheeler isn't smart enough to fix it... well, that sort of figures. > Just reclassify broadband as a 'telecommunications service' already. That wouldn't really fix anything though. It's very likely to have not only unintended consequences, but bad ones.
- e28eta 12y ago
  Comcast would very quickly start paying for upgrades if they were losing customers over it. I'd love to switch to someone else. Peering is only broken because consumer ISPs are monopolistic, and the big ones are some of the most hated companies in the US, and don't seem to care.
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 12y ago
    > Comcast would very quickly start paying for upgrades if they were losing customers over it. This seems irrelevant. They're not losing customers. Is Comcast obligated to "lose" those customers themselves, as some sort of self-punishment? > I'd love to switch to someone else. About 3 weeks ago, I had an idea. It might have not been a very good idea. But I turned to my coworker, and I said "hey, those signs Google gives out in Kansas City for people to put in their yards... do you think we could make the local news if we could get 100 people to put them in their yards?". He said he thought that might actually be possible. And if we could get on the evening news, maybe we could drum up support for our city council to actually do something about it. The signs cost about $600 (give or take), and we launched an indiegogo campaign that will end soon. No one is helping though. We've got hundreds and maybe even thousands of Facebook likes, but people won't even donate $5. Hell, they'd end up getting the yard sign that the $5 buys. But they're not just cheapskates, they're also dumb as rocks. One person was complaining about the idea that someone else might get a yard sign if they donated... as if it matters whose yard the sign ends up in, supposing this works. Another said it was a waste of money, that we should just go speak at city council... absent the display of public support of the idea, apparently. Despite all the griping and complaining, I'm having alot of trouble believing anyone who says they want something different. Maybe you would want something different, if it just happens to you. But none of you really deserve anymore than you're getting. > Peering is only broken because consumer ISPs are monopolistic, That's dumb. I've already described how and why peering might be broken. If you had Comcast and Evil Universe Comcast both available where you live right now... we'd still be going through the same crap. Why? Because Netflix would be flooding both of them with asymmetric traffic. And both would still refuse to pay for the upgrades that only benefit Netflix. It's not a monopoly problem. You'd get that if you bothered to think about it. > some of the most hated companies in the US, Some of that hatred is deserved. But that doesn't change the fact that it may not be their fault here. So blaming them, even punishing them... that's not going to fix it.
tzs 12y ago
> Seriously, it seems like the FCC just can't be clear about what it is they actually plan to implement Briefly, they HAD regulations that were working. These regulations were based on FCC authority under a particular section of law, which I'll call Law X. Verizon and Comcast separately challenged different parts of the regulations and won in court. The court said Law X did not authorize the FCC to do all that had been doing. In particular, the banning of what people are now calling "fast lanes" was not allowed. There is another law, law Y, that the FCC currently uses to regulate telephone service. This law is strong enough to ban fast lanes, but the consequences of using this more powerful weapon are unknown--for 30+ years data networks have been regulated under law X, not law Y. It is informally called "the nuclear option" because of this. What Wheeler would like to do is restore the regulations that the court struck down, and would like to avoid having to use the nuclear option for this. For the "fast lanes", he cannot outright ban them without going nuclear, so instead he's proposing regulating them. For example, if an ISP gives a video service it or some related corporate entity owns a "fast lane", it would have to offer similar service on "commercially reasonable terms" to outside video services. Also, demand for "fast lanes" could not be boosted by slowing people down--if your ISP sells you a service they claim is 20 mbit/second, for instance, they will be required to deliver that. They will not be allowed to slow you down to 10 mbit/second to make you complain to, say, Netflix, to encourage Netflix to pay for a "fast lane" on your ISP. The tech press has done a terrible reporting job on this for the most part (Ars Technica seems to be the most accurate, and has published some accurate stories). They like to report it as Wheeler proposing to allow "fast lanes", in a way that implies "fast lanes" are new. In fact, under the regulations in effect now that the court struck down the earlier regulations, "fast lanes" are allowed, with no restrictions at all. Wheeler's "commercially reasonable terms" proposal is an attempt to put some limits on the "fast lanes". Wheeler has always said that other options are on the table. That's why the proposal came with a bunch of questions about whether this was the right approach, and whether the nuclear option should be pursued. It is very common for proposed regulations to change significantly as a result of the feedback during the comment period. There is no reason to think that will not happen here.

dragonwriter 12y ago

> Seriously, it seems like the FCC just can't be clear about what it is they actually plan to implement. The FCC is very clear that they haven't entirely decided what they "plan to implement" in complete detail. They have formally adopted something that is both an outline and a call for public input with specific questions on both the outline itself and alternatives to it (including specific questions related to Title II classification), and on how best to fill in details within the outline. > Just reclassify broadband as a 'telecommunications service' already. Doing so is a basis for regulation which has its own constraints distinct from those for regulation of information services, and deciding to do that doesn't, in and of itself, resolve the details of how to regulate. The FCCs recent call for comments specifically invites comments on that alternative, and details of how commenters see that alternative compared to the proposed outline (including details of how regulations under that authority should be crafted to acheive the broad policy goals that the FCC's Open Internet work is designed to serve.)

NoMoreNicksLeft 12y ago

I won't defend Wheeler, he's a jackass. However, no one else anywhere seems to be telling the truth. And we're never going to arrive at a solution that everyone enjoys or thinks fair if we continue to chant internet activist slogans. In 1997, peering worked because we need a simple solution whereby dozens of private companies could hook their networks together without going through the complicated accounting of who owed who how much. Most networks sent as much as they received, there was little point in nitpicking the slight differences. In 2014, this may not be the case. Level3 wants to send much more traffic to Comcast than Comcast would ever send to Level3. This is because Netflix (a Level3 customer) is asymmetric in nature. Why is Comcast obligated to do this for free? Comcast doesn't offer its customers "Netflix service". Indeed, if it did, people would go crazy screaming net neutrality slogans. Comcast offers internet service, and they don't guarantee access to Netflix especially when Netflix doesn't bother to acquire sufficient network connectivity. This doesn't mean Netflix is evil. It doesn't mean that Comcast is anything other than evil. But Comcast does feel cheated if they're forced to pay for the upgrades, and Netflix feels cheated if they're forced to pay for the upgrades (even though they are the ones who benefit from this). This means that peering in general may not work anymore. That is the real problem that no one seems smart enough to address. And if it does not work, what replaces it? So if you're suggesting Wheeler isn't smart enough to fix it... well, that sort of figures. > Just reclassify broadband as a 'telecommunications service' already. That wouldn't really fix anything though. It's very likely to have not only unintended consequences, but bad ones.

e28eta 12y ago
Comcast would very quickly start paying for upgrades if they were losing customers over it. I'd love to switch to someone else. Peering is only broken because consumer ISPs are monopolistic, and the big ones are some of the most hated companies in the US, and don't seem to care.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 12y ago
  > Comcast would very quickly start paying for upgrades if they were losing customers over it. This seems irrelevant. They're not losing customers. Is Comcast obligated to "lose" those customers themselves, as some sort of self-punishment? > I'd love to switch to someone else. About 3 weeks ago, I had an idea. It might have not been a very good idea. But I turned to my coworker, and I said "hey, those signs Google gives out in Kansas City for people to put in their yards... do you think we could make the local news if we could get 100 people to put them in their yards?". He said he thought that might actually be possible. And if we could get on the evening news, maybe we could drum up support for our city council to actually do something about it. The signs cost about $600 (give or take), and we launched an indiegogo campaign that will end soon. No one is helping though. We've got hundreds and maybe even thousands of Facebook likes, but people won't even donate $5. Hell, they'd end up getting the yard sign that the $5 buys. But they're not just cheapskates, they're also dumb as rocks. One person was complaining about the idea that someone else might get a yard sign if they donated... as if it matters whose yard the sign ends up in, supposing this works. Another said it was a waste of money, that we should just go speak at city council... absent the display of public support of the idea, apparently. Despite all the griping and complaining, I'm having alot of trouble believing anyone who says they want something different. Maybe you would want something different, if it just happens to you. But none of you really deserve anymore than you're getting. > Peering is only broken because consumer ISPs are monopolistic, That's dumb. I've already described how and why peering might be broken. If you had Comcast and Evil Universe Comcast both available where you live right now... we'd still be going through the same crap. Why? Because Netflix would be flooding both of them with asymmetric traffic. And both would still refuse to pay for the upgrades that only benefit Netflix. It's not a monopoly problem. You'd get that if you bothered to think about it. > some of the most hated companies in the US, Some of that hatred is deserved. But that doesn't change the fact that it may not be their fault here. So blaming them, even punishing them... that's not going to fix it.

tzs 12y ago

> Seriously, it seems like the FCC just can't be clear about what it is they actually plan to implement Briefly, they HAD regulations that were working. These regulations were based on FCC authority under a particular section of law, which I'll call Law X. Verizon and Comcast separately challenged different parts of the regulations and won in court. The court said Law X did not authorize the FCC to do all that had been doing. In particular, the banning of what people are now calling "fast lanes" was not allowed. There is another law, law Y, that the FCC currently uses to regulate telephone service. This law is strong enough to ban fast lanes, but the consequences of using this more powerful weapon are unknown--for 30+ years data networks have been regulated under law X, not law Y. It is informally called "the nuclear option" because of this. What Wheeler would like to do is restore the regulations that the court struck down, and would like to avoid having to use the nuclear option for this. For the "fast lanes", he cannot outright ban them without going nuclear, so instead he's proposing regulating them. For example, if an ISP gives a video service it or some related corporate entity owns a "fast lane", it would have to offer similar service on "commercially reasonable terms" to outside video services. Also, demand for "fast lanes" could not be boosted by slowing people down--if your ISP sells you a service they claim is 20 mbit/second, for instance, they will be required to deliver that. They will not be allowed to slow you down to 10 mbit/second to make you complain to, say, Netflix, to encourage Netflix to pay for a "fast lane" on your ISP. The tech press has done a terrible reporting job on this for the most part (Ars Technica seems to be the most accurate, and has published some accurate stories). They like to report it as Wheeler proposing to allow "fast lanes", in a way that implies "fast lanes" are new. In fact, under the regulations in effect now that the court struck down the earlier regulations, "fast lanes" are allowed, with no restrictions at all. Wheeler's "commercially reasonable terms" proposal is an attempt to put some limits on the "fast lanes". Wheeler has always said that other options are on the table. That's why the proposal came with a bunch of questions about whether this was the right approach, and whether the nuclear option should be pursued. It is very common for proposed regulations to change significantly as a result of the feedback during the comment period. There is no reason to think that will not happen here.