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Good for Wheeler. Obama waited until the Democrats lost control of the Senate to drop this bomb. He knew it would be DOA on arrival in a Reid controlled Senate

Good for Wheeler. Obama waited until the Democrats lost control of the Senate to drop this bomb. He knew it would be DOA on arrival in a Reid controlled Senate and I really doubt he would have made this move with Reid still there. Now the onus is on the incoming Republicans, who may be at odds with their own base if they don't do something to prevent companies from charging for access by Netflix and similar. Regulation of such, turning these providers into utilities isn't going to come up all roses. There exists a distinct possibility many will see less options going forward, roll outs of new tech may slow and even never reach many users, all because nothing moves slower than a utility, especially heavily regulated and protected ones. So unless the government is in turn going require the deployment of specific speeds to all regions and set dates all I see is higher costs and less new services. Call me a pessimist, but after waiting years for Bellsouth to provide reasonably priced high speed internet I was more than happy when the cable company came to town

themartorana 12y ago
No no no no no. You're a pessimist. I mean yes, Obama is a jerk for waiting until this moment to declare these intentions. But I don't ever, ever want Comcast or other monopoly being able to bundle data providers as an anti-competitive practice and charge me extra for access to them. "Comcast Search for free, access to Google or DuckDuckGo comes with our Premier package! Or get them for free for 6 months when you buy Triple Play." I pay for bandwidth only, and where they become public utilities, they have to offer competitive access to the last mile. Just like phone companies. Remember dial-up ISPs? People ran them out of their homes because phone companies weren't allowed to regulate what you used the lines for. They were the bricks that built the Internet. Right now my access to data is locked behind a permissive firewall, where Comcast has only tightened the screws on Netflix so far, but who knows what else is next. Edit: I meant to comment on Wheeler's misguided need to please everyone. The government is supposed to look out for the interests of its citizens, not semi-monopolistic corporations. I don't understand this need to find a middle ground. I mean, I get that "why" is likely big piles of cash, I'm speaking more altruistically. Silly me.
skywhopper 12y ago
You overestimate the incentive of Comcast et al to improve what they have in place now. They have essentially a monopoly in most of their markets over what is a utility service. The priority at this moment has to be prserving the de facto status quo of net neutrality. Allowing Comcast to use their monopoly position to extract rents from their competitors like Netflix is not a precedent we can let stand. If we go down that road, the Internet will quickly become a very different place.
- fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
  Exactly. Cable co's are in a great position. They have a lot of upstream bandwidth available to upgrade their services, they have DOCSIS 3 or better modems in the field; barring other shortcomings in their networks they can roll out upgrades if competition ever arrives, probably killing it.

themartorana 12y ago

No no no no no. You're a pessimist. I mean yes, Obama is a jerk for waiting until this moment to declare these intentions. But I don't ever, ever want Comcast or other monopoly being able to bundle data providers as an anti-competitive practice and charge me extra for access to them. "Comcast Search for free, access to Google or DuckDuckGo comes with our Premier package! Or get them for free for 6 months when you buy Triple Play." I pay for bandwidth only, and where they become public utilities, they have to offer competitive access to the last mile. Just like phone companies. Remember dial-up ISPs? People ran them out of their homes because phone companies weren't allowed to regulate what you used the lines for. They were the bricks that built the Internet. Right now my access to data is locked behind a permissive firewall, where Comcast has only tightened the screws on Netflix so far, but who knows what else is next. Edit: I meant to comment on Wheeler's misguided need to please everyone. The government is supposed to look out for the interests of its citizens, not semi-monopolistic corporations. I don't understand this need to find a middle ground. I mean, I get that "why" is likely big piles of cash, I'm speaking more altruistically. Silly me.

skywhopper 12y ago

You overestimate the incentive of Comcast et al to improve what they have in place now. They have essentially a monopoly in most of their markets over what is a utility service. The priority at this moment has to be prserving the de facto status quo of net neutrality. Allowing Comcast to use their monopoly position to extract rents from their competitors like Netflix is not a precedent we can let stand. If we go down that road, the Internet will quickly become a very different place.

fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
Exactly. Cable co's are in a great position. They have a lot of upstream bandwidth available to upgrade their services, they have DOCSIS 3 or better modems in the field; barring other shortcomings in their networks they can roll out upgrades if competition ever arrives, probably killing it.