4 ms·

It's interesting reading some of the form letters in opposition. Here's an excerpt. Regulating the Internet would be a job killer. All those who are employed a

by uxp 12y ago

It's interesting reading some of the form letters in opposition. Here's an excerpt. Regulating the Internet would be a job killer. All those who are employed as tech support, companies that make and deploy servers, routers, coax and fiber-optic cable will suffer job losses if the FCC chases billions of dollars of investments away by regulating Internet services as if they were a public utility. Every time Washington bureaucrats have grabbed massive new powers for themselves, they have created economic and human wreckage in their wake. Obamacare regulations on the healthcare system have cost millions of Americans their health insurance, and raised the cost of insurance and deductibles to millions more. That's just an outright lie. Here's a rhetorical question. If a DDoS is classified as an attack because the client consuming server resources doesn't actually care about the resource, then what is flooding a comment board with identically wrong and manipulative letters?

rayiner 12y ago
None of that is a lie, it's just looking at particular pieces of the overall issue. Obamacare has cost a lot of people their (existing, non-ACA compliant) plans, and it has raised the cost of insurance for other people. That's inevitable with the ACA: covering people with pre-existing conditions, etc, means some people will pay more (particularly younger people). I think the ACA is a good thing, by the way, but I'm not deluded enough to believe that you can cover more of the sickest people without paying more money. The point about telecom jobs isn't a lie either. What was the impact of local-loop unbundling, which made investment into DSL unattractive, on DSL installers? The mechanics of the telecom industry aren't any different than that of Silicon Valley: people aren't going to spend a bunch of money hiring people to build things unless there is a potential for a big payout at the end. Companies like Verizon are already under the gun from investors for the billions they spent deploying fiber. Making it less attractive to be in the business of building infrastructure isn't going to increase the amount of investment and jobs in the sector. Now, you could argue that Title II might nonetheless be beneficial on the net, but it's not a lie to point out the things that could be hurt by the Title II regulations.
- _dark_matter_ 12y ago
  I'm confused at why you are being downvoted. This is a reasonable response explaining the comments covered by the parent post. You aren't even arguing for or against! Ridiculous.
  - knightofmars 12y ago
    Because, human nature.
- knightofmars 12y ago
  I think you hit the nail slightly off center with, "...people aren't going to spend a bunch of money hiring people to build things unless there is a potential for a big payout at the end." Verizon and all other ISPs will make money and lots of it, period. Whether or not they make insane profits or more insane profits is what investors are looking at. Also, in regards to building infrastructure they already play games when reporting how much they've spent upgrading and maintaining infrastructure. Why would they do that? Because they know that the total amount is so ridiculously small when compared with their profits that they'll be laughed at if they try to make it a reason against regulation.
  - rayiner 12y ago
    I'm not sure what numbers you're looking at. The ISP business isn't that profitable. The biggest pure cable companies are TWC, Cox, and Charter. Cox is privately-held, so we don't have information about their finances, but Charter is losing money. TWC has almost 3x the revenue of Facebook, but only marginally higher net income.[1] Moreover, the pure ISP business is even less profitable. Both TWC and Charter would be $1-2 billion per year in the red if you eliminated their video programming revenues and associated costs. Verizon's FiOS is apparently profitable on an operating basis, but there is question whether the company will be able to recoup its capital costs: http://ipcarrier.blogspot.com/2014/05/would-verizon-recover-its-cost-of.html http://ipcarrier.blogspot.com/2014/05/would-verizon-recover-... [1] It's very profitable when your users generate your content for free, and you can shift tax liability overseas.
- 12y ago

by uxp 12y ago

rayiner 12y ago

None of that is a lie, it's just looking at particular pieces of the overall issue. Obamacare has cost a lot of people their (existing, non-ACA compliant) plans, and it has raised the cost of insurance for other people. That's inevitable with the ACA: covering people with pre-existing conditions, etc, means some people will pay more (particularly younger people). I think the ACA is a good thing, by the way, but I'm not deluded enough to believe that you can cover more of the sickest people without paying more money. The point about telecom jobs isn't a lie either. What was the impact of local-loop unbundling, which made investment into DSL unattractive, on DSL installers? The mechanics of the telecom industry aren't any different than that of Silicon Valley: people aren't going to spend a bunch of money hiring people to build things unless there is a potential for a big payout at the end. Companies like Verizon are already under the gun from investors for the billions they spent deploying fiber. Making it less attractive to be in the business of building infrastructure isn't going to increase the amount of investment and jobs in the sector. Now, you could argue that Title II might nonetheless be beneficial on the net, but it's not a lie to point out the things that could be hurt by the Title II regulations.

_dark_matter_ 12y ago
I'm confused at why you are being downvoted. This is a reasonable response explaining the comments covered by the parent post. You aren't even arguing for or against! Ridiculous.
- knightofmars 12y ago
  Because, human nature.
knightofmars 12y ago
I think you hit the nail slightly off center with, "...people aren't going to spend a bunch of money hiring people to build things unless there is a potential for a big payout at the end." Verizon and all other ISPs will make money and lots of it, period. Whether or not they make insane profits or more insane profits is what investors are looking at. Also, in regards to building infrastructure they already play games when reporting how much they've spent upgrading and maintaining infrastructure. Why would they do that? Because they know that the total amount is so ridiculously small when compared with their profits that they'll be laughed at if they try to make it a reason against regulation.
- rayiner 12y ago
  I'm not sure what numbers you're looking at. The ISP business isn't that profitable. The biggest pure cable companies are TWC, Cox, and Charter. Cox is privately-held, so we don't have information about their finances, but Charter is losing money. TWC has almost 3x the revenue of Facebook, but only marginally higher net income.[1] Moreover, the pure ISP business is even less profitable. Both TWC and Charter would be $1-2 billion per year in the red if you eliminated their video programming revenues and associated costs. Verizon's FiOS is apparently profitable on an operating basis, but there is question whether the company will be able to recoup its capital costs: http://ipcarrier.blogspot.com/2014/05/would-verizon-recover-its-cost-of.html http://ipcarrier.blogspot.com/2014/05/would-verizon-recover-... [1] It's very profitable when your users generate your content for free, and you can shift tax liability overseas.
12y ago