12 ms·

FCC chairman tips his hand on net neutrality

119 points by mikecarlton 12y ago

eli 12y ago
Title II would be exciting and a big change. I think it's a good thing, but I can't help but be a little worried about the unforeseen consequences.
- iends 12y ago
  This is what scares me the most because I fear Title II may be used to open the Internet to greater regulation. Hopefully this fear is unfound.
  - ep103 12y ago
    Can't be worse than what we have, and our current course
    - twoodfin 12y ago
      It can't? I don't know about you, but my Comcast performance, both promised and real, has been growing steadily for over a decade, at a much higher rate than the price has increased. That's not a natural law, that's investment in technology and infrastructure. As that investment looks to be worth less, it'll slow down or cease. Look at Verizon's dramatic reduction in FiOS deployment, for example.
      - raverbashing 12y ago
        Sure it's worth less, that's why Google is deploying Google fiber... It's worth "less" (and essentially from their market perception today) which doesn't mean it's worth little or worthless, but of course in a monopoly/oligopoly your profits are bigger and you control the market.
        twoodfin 12y ago
        Sure it's worth less, that's why Google is deploying Google fiber... If Google really believed in the potential profitability of fiber, they could spend $20 or $30 billion over the next few years to get it in every major metro area. But they won't, because it wouldn't be.
        wtallis 12y ago
        If you're considering a multi-year nationwide build-out, what's the harm in another year or two delay to allow the regulatory situation to change to make the expansion drastically easier? If it were the actual digging of trenches that were expensive, Google Fiber would have never happened at any scale in the first place. Google's words and actions make it clear that the deciding factor is the costs of the permits and other local regulatory overhead, not the physical installation.
        SEJeff 12y ago
        Google fiber is plain an simple a serious enough competitor to the major telcos that they'll continue to invest in fast internet tech such as infra upgrades and fiber optics. Google stands to make money from more people using the internet and being able to send more content to users. If they can spend enough money to force the incumbents to improve performance, they still win. Pretty sure the point of google fiber was to break even, but not really to ever be profitable. It is more of an insurance policy. They could light up all of the dark fiber they own and be a real problem with the major ISPs if they so chose.
      - zipwitch 12y ago
        I had better (in terms of both cost and quality) internet living in rural southeast Asia five years ago than I do now, living in a million+ metropolitan area in the US. From my perspective, it realistically can't get worse.
      - rnovak 12y ago
        You're one person, there are 300,000,000 others that matter as well, and it's an established fact that Comcast, as a whole, is a horrible company. Their customer service is atrocious, and something I myself have had to deal with. John Oliver had it right, it is literally "preventing Cable Co. Fuckery"
      - tbyehl 12y ago
        The existence and decline of FiOS is the perfect example of unintended regulatory consequences. FiOS never would have happened if fibre hadn't been excluded from unbundled access requirements. Line-sharing was eliminated around the same time, bringing on the decline of alternative DSL providers. So Verizon spends a few years doing FiOS build outs instead of improving their copper networks, the DSL competition dies off, and now they've stopped investing in their whole wireline business in favor of wireless. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-kushnick/the-great-verizon-fios-ripoff_b_1529287.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-kushnick/the-great-veriz... I don't know what Title II means for ISPs. I see nothing wrong with companies paying for a "fast lane", if we define the fast lane as paying for a level of service to my devices in excess of what I'm buying (ie: If I'm paying for 6Mbps of service, Netflix can buy me an extra 10Mbps to guarantee a better streaming experience). I do have a problem with ISPs purposefully allowing their peering connections to become overloaded in order to extract payment from content companies. I'm not paying Comcast for 100Mbps of bandwidth to their speedtest servers; I'm paying for 100Mbps of bandwidth to the content companies' networks!
        geoelectric 12y ago
        I don't think a fast lane means what you're saying. It means packet prioritization, so that a saturated network delivers the "fast" packets sooner and/or more reliably. Companies that push data to consumers (Netflix, etc.) would pay for this prioritization. Think QoS rules, but with companies that have paid for preferential treatment at the top.
        tbyehl 12y ago
        Fast lane is a made up political gobbledygook. I think it's fine for an ISP to sell whatever kind of preferential treatment they like to any company which freely chooses to purchase it, with the caveat that they service I'm paying for isn't being degraded. If Microsoft wants to pay so that streaming stuff to my Xbox doesn't affect my data cap, that's goovy. If Netflix wants to pay to guarantee they can stream 10Mbps to my devices while my other devices are using the whole 100Mbps that I'm paying for, that's cool too. If Hulu wants to pay for QoS that prioritizes their traffic to me above my other traffic, that's not cool. Bandwidth management within my home is my domain and I've got my own QoS rules, thank you very much. When Comcast lets their peering links get saturated in order to force Netflix to pay them, that's absolutely bad. I'm paying for access to the Internet and purposefully withholding the necessary peering to the content I'm interested in means that I'm being ripped off. TLDR; I believe that ISPs should peer on a settlement-free basis with anyone who can deliver a commercially reasonable level of traffic to any of their peering points, without regard to ratios. And I believe they should be able to sell any kind of paid prioritization they like that does not degrade my other traffic.
      - geoelectric 12y ago
        That's only half the equation, though. The other half is whether Comcast allows you full use of the line in terms of what services can push to you. As far as whether your bandwidth will continue to go up and prices go down (comparatively), it almost certainly will if more competitors are allowed to deliver to your house. What's trickier there is new deployment, but that's what the utility model is all about: protect new deployment of infrastructure for long enough to make rollout worth it, in exchange for a guarantee that it will be usable by the public at large without preference. That gives you, in essence, the telephone model: copper lines protected until (probably subsidized) costs to the provider are recouped, they're a commodity and no further enhancement will occur, then alternate providers let in on them for competition. Tech changes, protect that tech rollout, repeat.
  - geoelectric 12y ago
    Either the ISP aspect of the Internet is open to regulation or it's not. That's true right now. If it isn't, any net neutrality effort is going to get knocked down sooner or later. You have little to worry about. If it is, this is the right kind of regulation to have, because it prevents a potential (and arguably current) oligarchy from effectively regulating the service aspect of the Internet. I'm all for free market economics as the rational default when starting from an even playing field. However, the current market leaders got where they are by being treated as utilities from the start, in terms of subsidy and privilege for placement of infrastructure. It doesn't make sense to give them protectionist advantages, then go hands off from there. There's a great argument for not doing the former in the first place (albeit one that probably would have prevented the Internet at current scale), but once you've committed you have to follow through. I'll worry about the slippery slope of further regulation when it starts happening. Right now, I'm considerably more worried about ICE and ICANN jurisdiction issues and copyright/trade treaties, as far as threats to the Internet by the American government and corporate structure go. What's more interesting about this to me is the "only 25Mbps+ is broadband" news bit from yesterday. Does that create a big loophole for exemption from Title II for the grand majority of US internet service that doesn't meet that bar?
- wnevets 12y ago
  what are some of the possible consequences of title 2?
  - Zigurd 12y ago
    Pole access. That's a Good Thing.
  - rhino369 12y ago
    Price controls Higher taxes on ISP service metered service drastic reduction in investment due to uncertainty pole attachment rates could go up since some towns charge more for title II services (for some dumb reason) The next republican run FCC ruling that not blocking porn is unreasonable The next FCC ruling that not blocking piracy is unreasonable All sorts of shit.
    - wtracy 12y ago
      metered service Might actually be a good thing. The next republican run FCC ruling that not blocking porn is unreasonable The next FCC ruling that not blocking piracy is unreasonable I thought Title II explicitly shielded carriers from responsibility for the content that went over their networks?
      - rhino369 12y ago
        Shielding them from responsibility doesn't mean it can't force them to take measures to prevent it.
        organsnyder 12y ago
        Please cite a case where a Title II service has been required to take these sorts of measures in the past.
        rhino369 12y ago
        Do Not Call List The Bush Era FCC was fining people for swearing on TV and Radio. Both parties support SOPA and 6 strikes. The FCC regulated phone sex lines in the 1980s.
- rayiner 12y ago
  Most people here, myself included, are too young to remember what the world looked like when other industries were regulated under rules similar to Title II. It's a 1970's style, "ask permission before you do anything" regulatory framework. Such regulation was applied to airlines, trucking, railroads, etc. One of the most exciting things happening right now is the disruption of retail with vendors like Amazon shipping directly to consumers. None of that would have been possible if it weren't for air cargo deregulation, which allowed UPS and FedEx to come into existence: http://mercatus.org/publication/unleashing-innovation-deregulation-air-cargo-transportation http://mercatus.org/publication/unleashing-innovation-deregu.... I understand some people want net neutrality, but this is a bad way to go about it.
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    > It's a 1970's style, "ask permission before you do anything" regulatory framework. No one yet who has made this claim has established that Title II classification would mandate the FCC to use that kind of regulatory framework, though I don't think there is any dispute that Title II classification could support such a framework. Of course, rather than arguing about abstractions, we can argue once actual regulations are proposed, at which point -- and only at which point -- will we actually discussing anything other than what someone speculates might be the proposed regulatory framework.
    - rhino369 12y ago
      One of the massive issues with title II is that it can retroactively punish for "unreasonable charges or practices."
  - ethbro 12y ago
    What is a good way to go about it? Because from my perspective, there's more than enough accumulated capital / lobbying / entrenched market positions to make disruption of the market a pipe dream. In that case, I consider slapping "too burdensome" regulations and then later parring them down the lesser of two evils. Is or isn't internet access important enough to be treated as a utility? That's what Title II asks in my opinion. If so, then sort out the implementation details later. (Disclaimer: In a semi-related note, I support the ACA for the same reasons. Is universal health insurance important enough to codify in law? If so, work on the details after you get that point down on paper.)
- Shivetya 12y ago
  One thing is for sure, if the define broadband as 25/3; mentioned elsewhere; and do similar for "unrestricted access" or whatever terms they use you can guarantee that is what you will get and likely the most you ever will. Welcome to mediocrity by regulation. So the new baseline will be less than what I have now and what I have now can cost more since it exceeds the requirements... they can even brand it "ultra" or "extreme". As soon as ISPs go under such regulation they all arrive at the lowest common denominator.
  - josephlord 12y ago
    Why wouldn't companies compete at least as much as now? They might charge more for higher tiers but I don't see any, justification behind your assertions.
- bsder 12y ago
  The problem is that we don't have competition because you have to dig up the ground. And, everything else which requires that you dig up the ground is regulated (electricity, water, sewage, etc.) The ISPs did this to themselves with crappy service which they then tried to enforce by regulation (lobbying, sweetheart laws to stifle local deployments, etc.) The ISPs created the openings, and now they're going to have to live with the problems.
  - icebraining 12y ago
    Other countries have to dig up the ground too, and they have competition. And no, not every of those countries has public last-mile infrastructure, the ISPs actually build it themselves.
- mwsherman 12y ago
  They are foreseeable. This sort of regulation ensures that only big players (incumbents) will play, because it tilts advantage to those with better lobbyists. http://clipperhouse.com/2010/02/22/net-neutrality-and-preserving-the-dinosaurs/ http://clipperhouse.com/2010/02/22/net-neutrality-and-preser...
- worklogin 12y ago
  I'm concerned about QoS. Will it be legal to throttle HTTP for voice traffic?
baldfat 12y ago
We MUST have true competition and instead of localized monopolies. This is the issue. Government Regulation can potentially be very scary, but monopolies are 100% scary and even Libertarians should be against them.
- mindslight 12y ago
  How many driveways does your residence have? You're fighting a pretty tough natural monopoly to get multiple sets of competing wires. That we have both copper and coax is a relic from the days where they could each only carry specific type of signal. A form of competition could be fostered by making the wire layers into utilities that wholesale to transit providers. However, it already is this way on the telco side. In most areas, there is little third party interest for investing in competing transit networks, so the ILEC is left as the only provider. Perhaps there would be more interest if latest gen technologies were (de)regulated in the same way, but that undermines investment in new physical wires.
  - sitkack 12y ago
    Most people don't need wires. In a normal density neighborhood, wireless on the pole would serve most people's needs. I am absolutely in favor of the last mile being owned by the people and ISPs competing for services and bandwidth. That also means that cross town traffic would be extremely low cost (free or a couple bucks a month).
    - mindslight 12y ago
      Wireless in a neighborhood doesn't really address the problem, as you still have to backhaul from there. (And most people would be fine investing in wire from house to pole if they could switch it between providers without digging). I'm all for community networks, but top-down "federal" policy will never prescribe them.
      - sitkack 12y ago
        I was just pushing a specific technological solution for the last mile that is a little cheaper. Yes, a wired connection to every location would be great, but 80% of my neighbors don't need that. In Seattle we just rolled out an LED streetlight replacement project, it would have been an excellent time to have installed the hardware for city wide mesh network. Power, placement and line-of-site are there at the top of a street light.
justizin 12y ago
"If Wheeler does propose to reclassify ISPs and regulate them under Title II of the Communications Act, that would be a stinging defeat for ISPs" I feel this adversarial perspective is unnecessary. Title II is good for anyone who wants to build a good Internet Service Provider. If you're an ISP, and you don't want to build a good ISP, that's bad for your business with or without Title II. Title II just provides a foundation for protecting customers of such idiots while they are in the process of going out of business.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  It would be a stinging defeat for the main major actually existing ISPs, all of whom have been actively fighting any net neutrality regulation and have especially opposed the idea of Title II reclassification. The adversarial perspective may slightly imprecise in identifying the one side ("ISPs" as opposed to "the major ISPs now in existence"), but is otherwise an accurate description of the facts.
  - justizin 12y ago
    It would be a stinging defeat for their expensive lobbyists, who will be fired. Comcast, Time Warner, AT&T, and Verizon won't change much. A lot of people forget that AT&T, Verizon, and Google put forth Net Neutrality legislation that was perfectly good, but limited temporarily to "wireline" services, because they wanted time to regulate wireless. That was like three or four years ago, so the argument at the time that we couldn't wait for wireless regulation is completely insolvent, since we also still don't have wireless regulation, and Title II is unlikely to cover wireless services, at least in this round - though I could be proven wrong. Look, I'm an anti-capitalist, anti-corporate activist, but most people, fellow engineers included, have no idea what they're talking about with Net Neutrality. Most people are protecting the interests of Netflix, who is a major corporation with a massive technology budget dwarfed only by its' massive budget for paying the MPAA. But please, keep regurgitating Netflix's talking points about how noone will be able to start a company in their basement ever again - an odd complaint, since before Comcast throttled Netflix to something like 70% of the total Comcast network, Netflix themselves may have been causing problems for people trying to launch companies from basements or garages, or just check their e-mail. Title II is a victory for the internet, it should be a utility, I've been saying this for the entire 20 years of my career since I was involved in Time Warner's beta test of Roadrunner and noticed that as an entertainment service, it wasn't regulated like my ISDN line. But the way this is all going down, it's clear to me that something is happening behind the scenes, and I think it looks like Netflix pouring water into a bucket with a few drops of Net Neutrality.
adwf 12y ago
What I don't understand is how exactly ISPs managed to be declared not utilities. Does no-one remember the really old acoustic coupled modems where you had to literally pick up the phone (utility) and place it on the receiver? All that happened was that we started plugging the phone line directly into an integrated modem - it's still going down the phone line for most people. An ISP is a telecoms provider and should technically already be regulated as one...
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- snowwrestler 12y ago
  I'm pretty sure telephone lines are indeed today regulated as utilities. That's why I can get DSL service from a company other than Verizon, even though Verizon owns all the phone lines in my neighborhood. No one ever put the phone modem on cable networks, though, or fiber optics, or wireless. None of those are regulated as utilities, so the only service providers on those lines are the companies who own the lines. This is a big reason Verizon has sunk almost all of their recent investment into FiOS and wireless.
- kbenson 12y ago
  Sort of? ISPs ran on top of telecom service, which itself ran on telecom infrastructure, not that differently than any business that received phone calls, except it utilized telecom more heavily. Later, with DSL, service was provided over the same infrastructure telecom used, blurring the line a bit. Additionally, by this point, the internet was becoming more important to daily life. Now, we have telecom and other services offered on top of the network service which is provided on infrastructure designed for networks, not telecom. So I would say, yes, an ISP is a telecoms provider, but they didn't really start that way. Edit: I'm being sort of loose with "telecom" here. I'm using more in the "what we regulate" sense than the "what the word means" sense.
  - seanp2k2 12y ago
    I don't even think telecom is ambiguous or used loosely in this regard; comcast provides telephone service, and "telecom", short for "telecommunications", is defined as "communication over a distance by cable, telegraph, telephone, or broadcasting." So in this, every single ISP is a telecom
simon_weber 12y ago
Interesting. The race is now on between Wheeler's Title II proposal and Congress Republicans' rumored Title X proposal [0]. [0] http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/12/19/congress-wants-to-legislate-net-neutrality-heres-what-that-might-look-like/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/12/19...
- seanp2k2 12y ago
  My pessimistic prediction: FCC will go for Title II, a legal shitstorm will ensue, it will be determined somehow that they don't have the right to regulate ISPs in that way, then ISPs will start charging per-service and home internet will basically be like cell data plans, but worse (Google Maps requires the maps and navigation package!).
RA_Fisher 12y ago
One thing that disturbs me about the Net Neutrality discussion is that nobody's talking about what we might be giving up. I've learned a lot about unintended effects of regulation. I have some ideas about what those might be, like reduced infrastructure investment by the ISPs, but as a community this discussion seems absent. Are there others out there that are concerned about the unforeseen consequences like I am? In particular, it feels like Net Neutrality will remove the incentive for video streaming services to put investment into new and improved compression algorithms. I worry about streaming video squeezing out simpler tcp/ip.
ChrisAntaki 12y ago
Does anyone else see Title II as potentially opening the door to more competition? From a recent article: http://www.engadget.com/2015/01/01/google-letter-fcc-title-ii/ http://www.engadget.com/2015/01/01/google-letter-fcc-title-i... > Mountain View pointed out that if broadband internet access is declared to be a Title II service, then Google Fiber should be granted the same access as other utilities to poles and other essential infrastructure. It went on to say that doing so would actually "promote broadband deployment and competition."
- wmf 12y ago
  There are still a bunch of details like franchises and redlining. There's also the natural monopoly argument.
  - exelius 12y ago
    Still not sure what you do in an overbuilding scenario. Those poles have physical restrictions such as weight and volume. You can't have 10 different telcos serve a neighborhood: there would just be too much gear on the pole. So how do you decide who gets the space on the poles? The sensible argument says you put them up for bid in an auction, but then the incumbents still have a huge sunk cost advantage.
    - mikecb 12y ago
      You spin out the vertical. If the consumers can support ten services, then those services should be able to support one infrastructure provider investing in better/stronger poles.
      - exelius 12y ago
        There would be an initial land rush if the poles were to be opened, and a large number of providers would likely fail sometime after that as the market shakes things out. Even if the market will converge on 3 or 4 providers, there may be initial demand for pole access by 10+ providers. Assuming the physical limitations on the poles are less than the demand, how should a regulatory body decide which providers get access and which ones don't? In the end, any shared infrastructure problem inevitably ends up with a limited franchise framework because it's the most efficient way to do it. The FCC has tried regulating through this framework for years via spectrum auctions, and all they've really done is provide a form of tax revenue from the big telecoms to the FCC. The spectrum is often sold with restrictions that are eventually waived quietly if the winners hold them for a little while, and they get sold to the big national players anyway.
Zizzle 12y ago
I'm a bit worried that these stories floating around about title 2 being imminent will give the monopolies time to throw more money at the problem to make it go away. i.e. "convince" Wheeler or get congress to pass a bill. Or it could be a ploy by Wheeler. Make noise about full regulation, then make the carriers think they have won some concession when he negotiates and implements something lesser.
debacle 12y ago
I feel like this has been the Obama Administration's plan all along, and that everything else has been mostly political theater - mostly to make ISPs look bad and force them to shoot themselves in the foot.
- jostmey 12y ago
  I disagree. My suspicion is that Tom Wheeler wants to dive deeper into the powers of government. By dragging out a decision on net neutrality he has brought the media spotlight to himself. Just think about how many people now know his name. He could probably run for a simple office now and win.
  - debacle 12y ago
    I'm not sure how true that is. Generally heading something like the FCC is a bit of a death sentence to your political career. You are sort of cordoned into the bureaucrat/lobbyist pool.
    - omarali 12y ago
      http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/11/f-c-c-commissioner-to-join-comcast http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/11/f-c-c-commi...
skuhn 12y ago
The large American ISPs (i.e. cable and telephone companies) have made an enormous mistake with their recent attempts to create artificial network congestion to extract rent, and I'm glad that the FCC seems to think that this isn't acceptable behavior. I still wish that the resolution wasn't government regulation. Everyone should be able to access the Internet, at a reasonable cost that covers their usage and makes a reasonable profit. No packages, plans, quotas or other nonsense -- no limits whatsoever. The fundamental costs of building a network lie in the instantaneous bandwidth provided and the oversubscription ratio, not in how many bits you move in a month or whether your data is going to this site or that site. This is not how things work right now for a lot of people. Likewise, everyone should be able to serve content to these users, on equal footing relative to the legitimate costs that are being paid. If I'm YouTube, then I should pay (or make a mutually beneficial agreement to peer) for my transit, and my upstream providers should be incentivized to provide quality service (at risk of being replaced). This is how things work right now for most sites. I think the root problem is that there is competition on only one side, the service provider side, where you can choose from tens or hundreds of transit partners. This side is undergoing substantial consolidation (not good), but I believe a significant part of that is because they have to keep getting bigger to compete with Comcast, et. al. It's an arms race. End user connectivity, on the other hand, has already been extremely consolidated since the late 90's. There is almost no real competition in most markets, even if multiple providers exist. Yes, a lot of people have two or more choices for ISPs at home or work. Generally it's between the phone and the cable company (AT&T and Comcast where I live). AT&T is not competitive on performance with Comcast at all, not even remotely close. There are two other good options (who I always try to do business with, when I can) in the area: Sonic.net and Webpass. They are either limited in terms of performance or in availability (or both), and their respective userbases are a fraction of AT&T's or Comcast's. They both support network neutrality. Why do they support it when AT&T and Comcast don't? I think it's because they aren't monopolies who were gifted substantial control of Internet at public expense, they aren't trying to be paid two or three times for the same bandwidth, and they aren't trying to prop up giant unrelated dinosaur businesses on the backs of their Internet service fees. They're both in one business, and they compete for that business, and they know that if they fail to perform adequately then they will lose that business. This is what we need to bring to all ISPs everywhere in the country, and we need it way more than formal network neutrality laws. AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Time Warner did not build the Internet, so why do they get disproportionate control over it by virtue of having some buried copper that runs to my house? It is inconceivable to me that we might allow any of them to acquire more subscribers and more territories. They should be broken up. If a company is allowed to have a monopoly in an area, fine. Maybe that makes sense. They should not be allowed to have a monopoly (or duopoly) that spans half of the country though. Chop up Comcast ala Standard Oil: one Comcast for every state (or even better, for every major metropolitan area) they operate in. They may still try to play shenanigans with Internet connectivity, but their bargaining power is now vastly reduced.

119 points by mikecarlton 12y ago

eli 12y ago

Title II would be exciting and a big change. I think it's a good thing, but I can't help but be a little worried about the unforeseen consequences.

iends 12y ago
This is what scares me the most because I fear Title II may be used to open the Internet to greater regulation. Hopefully this fear is unfound.
- ep103 12y ago
  Can't be worse than what we have, and our current course
  - twoodfin 12y ago
    It can't? I don't know about you, but my Comcast performance, both promised and real, has been growing steadily for over a decade, at a much higher rate than the price has increased. That's not a natural law, that's investment in technology and infrastructure. As that investment looks to be worth less, it'll slow down or cease. Look at Verizon's dramatic reduction in FiOS deployment, for example.
    - raverbashing 12y ago
      Sure it's worth less, that's why Google is deploying Google fiber... It's worth "less" (and essentially from their market perception today) which doesn't mean it's worth little or worthless, but of course in a monopoly/oligopoly your profits are bigger and you control the market.
      - twoodfin 12y ago
        Sure it's worth less, that's why Google is deploying Google fiber... If Google really believed in the potential profitability of fiber, they could spend $20 or $30 billion over the next few years to get it in every major metro area. But they won't, because it wouldn't be.
        wtallis 12y ago
        If you're considering a multi-year nationwide build-out, what's the harm in another year or two delay to allow the regulatory situation to change to make the expansion drastically easier? If it were the actual digging of trenches that were expensive, Google Fiber would have never happened at any scale in the first place. Google's words and actions make it clear that the deciding factor is the costs of the permits and other local regulatory overhead, not the physical installation.
      - SEJeff 12y ago
        Google fiber is plain an simple a serious enough competitor to the major telcos that they'll continue to invest in fast internet tech such as infra upgrades and fiber optics. Google stands to make money from more people using the internet and being able to send more content to users. If they can spend enough money to force the incumbents to improve performance, they still win. Pretty sure the point of google fiber was to break even, but not really to ever be profitable. It is more of an insurance policy. They could light up all of the dark fiber they own and be a real problem with the major ISPs if they so chose.
    - zipwitch 12y ago
      I had better (in terms of both cost and quality) internet living in rural southeast Asia five years ago than I do now, living in a million+ metropolitan area in the US. From my perspective, it realistically can't get worse.
    - rnovak 12y ago
      You're one person, there are 300,000,000 others that matter as well, and it's an established fact that Comcast, as a whole, is a horrible company. Their customer service is atrocious, and something I myself have had to deal with. John Oliver had it right, it is literally "preventing Cable Co. Fuckery"
    - tbyehl 12y ago
      The existence and decline of FiOS is the perfect example of unintended regulatory consequences. FiOS never would have happened if fibre hadn't been excluded from unbundled access requirements. Line-sharing was eliminated around the same time, bringing on the decline of alternative DSL providers. So Verizon spends a few years doing FiOS build outs instead of improving their copper networks, the DSL competition dies off, and now they've stopped investing in their whole wireline business in favor of wireless. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-kushnick/the-great-verizon-fios-ripoff_b_1529287.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-kushnick/the-great-veriz... I don't know what Title II means for ISPs. I see nothing wrong with companies paying for a "fast lane", if we define the fast lane as paying for a level of service to my devices in excess of what I'm buying (ie: If I'm paying for 6Mbps of service, Netflix can buy me an extra 10Mbps to guarantee a better streaming experience). I do have a problem with ISPs purposefully allowing their peering connections to become overloaded in order to extract payment from content companies. I'm not paying Comcast for 100Mbps of bandwidth to their speedtest servers; I'm paying for 100Mbps of bandwidth to the content companies' networks!
      - geoelectric 12y ago
        I don't think a fast lane means what you're saying. It means packet prioritization, so that a saturated network delivers the "fast" packets sooner and/or more reliably. Companies that push data to consumers (Netflix, etc.) would pay for this prioritization. Think QoS rules, but with companies that have paid for preferential treatment at the top.
        tbyehl 12y ago
        Fast lane is a made up political gobbledygook. I think it's fine for an ISP to sell whatever kind of preferential treatment they like to any company which freely chooses to purchase it, with the caveat that they service I'm paying for isn't being degraded. If Microsoft wants to pay so that streaming stuff to my Xbox doesn't affect my data cap, that's goovy. If Netflix wants to pay to guarantee they can stream 10Mbps to my devices while my other devices are using the whole 100Mbps that I'm paying for, that's cool too. If Hulu wants to pay for QoS that prioritizes their traffic to me above my other traffic, that's not cool. Bandwidth management within my home is my domain and I've got my own QoS rules, thank you very much. When Comcast lets their peering links get saturated in order to force Netflix to pay them, that's absolutely bad. I'm paying for access to the Internet and purposefully withholding the necessary peering to the content I'm interested in means that I'm being ripped off. TLDR; I believe that ISPs should peer on a settlement-free basis with anyone who can deliver a commercially reasonable level of traffic to any of their peering points, without regard to ratios. And I believe they should be able to sell any kind of paid prioritization they like that does not degrade my other traffic.
    - geoelectric 12y ago
      That's only half the equation, though. The other half is whether Comcast allows you full use of the line in terms of what services can push to you. As far as whether your bandwidth will continue to go up and prices go down (comparatively), it almost certainly will if more competitors are allowed to deliver to your house. What's trickier there is new deployment, but that's what the utility model is all about: protect new deployment of infrastructure for long enough to make rollout worth it, in exchange for a guarantee that it will be usable by the public at large without preference. That gives you, in essence, the telephone model: copper lines protected until (probably subsidized) costs to the provider are recouped, they're a commodity and no further enhancement will occur, then alternate providers let in on them for competition. Tech changes, protect that tech rollout, repeat.
- geoelectric 12y ago
  Either the ISP aspect of the Internet is open to regulation or it's not. That's true right now. If it isn't, any net neutrality effort is going to get knocked down sooner or later. You have little to worry about. If it is, this is the right kind of regulation to have, because it prevents a potential (and arguably current) oligarchy from effectively regulating the service aspect of the Internet. I'm all for free market economics as the rational default when starting from an even playing field. However, the current market leaders got where they are by being treated as utilities from the start, in terms of subsidy and privilege for placement of infrastructure. It doesn't make sense to give them protectionist advantages, then go hands off from there. There's a great argument for not doing the former in the first place (albeit one that probably would have prevented the Internet at current scale), but once you've committed you have to follow through. I'll worry about the slippery slope of further regulation when it starts happening. Right now, I'm considerably more worried about ICE and ICANN jurisdiction issues and copyright/trade treaties, as far as threats to the Internet by the American government and corporate structure go. What's more interesting about this to me is the "only 25Mbps+ is broadband" news bit from yesterday. Does that create a big loophole for exemption from Title II for the grand majority of US internet service that doesn't meet that bar?
wnevets 12y ago
what are some of the possible consequences of title 2?
- Zigurd 12y ago
  Pole access. That's a Good Thing.
- rhino369 12y ago
  Price controls Higher taxes on ISP service metered service drastic reduction in investment due to uncertainty pole attachment rates could go up since some towns charge more for title II services (for some dumb reason) The next republican run FCC ruling that not blocking porn is unreasonable The next FCC ruling that not blocking piracy is unreasonable All sorts of shit.
  - wtracy 12y ago
    metered service Might actually be a good thing. The next republican run FCC ruling that not blocking porn is unreasonable The next FCC ruling that not blocking piracy is unreasonable I thought Title II explicitly shielded carriers from responsibility for the content that went over their networks?
    - rhino369 12y ago
      Shielding them from responsibility doesn't mean it can't force them to take measures to prevent it.
      - organsnyder 12y ago
        Please cite a case where a Title II service has been required to take these sorts of measures in the past.
        rhino369 12y ago
        Do Not Call List The Bush Era FCC was fining people for swearing on TV and Radio. Both parties support SOPA and 6 strikes. The FCC regulated phone sex lines in the 1980s.
rayiner 12y ago
Most people here, myself included, are too young to remember what the world looked like when other industries were regulated under rules similar to Title II. It's a 1970's style, "ask permission before you do anything" regulatory framework. Such regulation was applied to airlines, trucking, railroads, etc. One of the most exciting things happening right now is the disruption of retail with vendors like Amazon shipping directly to consumers. None of that would have been possible if it weren't for air cargo deregulation, which allowed UPS and FedEx to come into existence: http://mercatus.org/publication/unleashing-innovation-deregulation-air-cargo-transportation http://mercatus.org/publication/unleashing-innovation-deregu.... I understand some people want net neutrality, but this is a bad way to go about it.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > It's a 1970's style, "ask permission before you do anything" regulatory framework. No one yet who has made this claim has established that Title II classification would mandate the FCC to use that kind of regulatory framework, though I don't think there is any dispute that Title II classification could support such a framework. Of course, rather than arguing about abstractions, we can argue once actual regulations are proposed, at which point -- and only at which point -- will we actually discussing anything other than what someone speculates might be the proposed regulatory framework.
  - rhino369 12y ago
    One of the massive issues with title II is that it can retroactively punish for "unreasonable charges or practices."
- ethbro 12y ago
  What is a good way to go about it? Because from my perspective, there's more than enough accumulated capital / lobbying / entrenched market positions to make disruption of the market a pipe dream. In that case, I consider slapping "too burdensome" regulations and then later parring them down the lesser of two evils. Is or isn't internet access important enough to be treated as a utility? That's what Title II asks in my opinion. If so, then sort out the implementation details later. (Disclaimer: In a semi-related note, I support the ACA for the same reasons. Is universal health insurance important enough to codify in law? If so, work on the details after you get that point down on paper.)
Shivetya 12y ago
One thing is for sure, if the define broadband as 25/3; mentioned elsewhere; and do similar for "unrestricted access" or whatever terms they use you can guarantee that is what you will get and likely the most you ever will. Welcome to mediocrity by regulation. So the new baseline will be less than what I have now and what I have now can cost more since it exceeds the requirements... they can even brand it "ultra" or "extreme". As soon as ISPs go under such regulation they all arrive at the lowest common denominator.
- josephlord 12y ago
  Why wouldn't companies compete at least as much as now? They might charge more for higher tiers but I don't see any, justification behind your assertions.
bsder 12y ago
The problem is that we don't have competition because you have to dig up the ground. And, everything else which requires that you dig up the ground is regulated (electricity, water, sewage, etc.) The ISPs did this to themselves with crappy service which they then tried to enforce by regulation (lobbying, sweetheart laws to stifle local deployments, etc.) The ISPs created the openings, and now they're going to have to live with the problems.
- icebraining 12y ago
  Other countries have to dig up the ground too, and they have competition. And no, not every of those countries has public last-mile infrastructure, the ISPs actually build it themselves.
mwsherman 12y ago
They are foreseeable. This sort of regulation ensures that only big players (incumbents) will play, because it tilts advantage to those with better lobbyists. http://clipperhouse.com/2010/02/22/net-neutrality-and-preserving-the-dinosaurs/ http://clipperhouse.com/2010/02/22/net-neutrality-and-preser...
worklogin 12y ago
I'm concerned about QoS. Will it be legal to throttle HTTP for voice traffic?

baldfat 12y ago

We MUST have true competition and instead of localized monopolies. This is the issue. Government Regulation can potentially be very scary, but monopolies are 100% scary and even Libertarians should be against them.

mindslight 12y ago
How many driveways does your residence have? You're fighting a pretty tough natural monopoly to get multiple sets of competing wires. That we have both copper and coax is a relic from the days where they could each only carry specific type of signal. A form of competition could be fostered by making the wire layers into utilities that wholesale to transit providers. However, it already is this way on the telco side. In most areas, there is little third party interest for investing in competing transit networks, so the ILEC is left as the only provider. Perhaps there would be more interest if latest gen technologies were (de)regulated in the same way, but that undermines investment in new physical wires.
- sitkack 12y ago
  Most people don't need wires. In a normal density neighborhood, wireless on the pole would serve most people's needs. I am absolutely in favor of the last mile being owned by the people and ISPs competing for services and bandwidth. That also means that cross town traffic would be extremely low cost (free or a couple bucks a month).
  - mindslight 12y ago
    Wireless in a neighborhood doesn't really address the problem, as you still have to backhaul from there. (And most people would be fine investing in wire from house to pole if they could switch it between providers without digging). I'm all for community networks, but top-down "federal" policy will never prescribe them.
    - sitkack 12y ago
      I was just pushing a specific technological solution for the last mile that is a little cheaper. Yes, a wired connection to every location would be great, but 80% of my neighbors don't need that. In Seattle we just rolled out an LED streetlight replacement project, it would have been an excellent time to have installed the hardware for city wide mesh network. Power, placement and line-of-site are there at the top of a street light.

justizin 12y ago

"If Wheeler does propose to reclassify ISPs and regulate them under Title II of the Communications Act, that would be a stinging defeat for ISPs" I feel this adversarial perspective is unnecessary. Title II is good for anyone who wants to build a good Internet Service Provider. If you're an ISP, and you don't want to build a good ISP, that's bad for your business with or without Title II. Title II just provides a foundation for protecting customers of such idiots while they are in the process of going out of business.

dragonwriter 12y ago
It would be a stinging defeat for the main major actually existing ISPs, all of whom have been actively fighting any net neutrality regulation and have especially opposed the idea of Title II reclassification. The adversarial perspective may slightly imprecise in identifying the one side ("ISPs" as opposed to "the major ISPs now in existence"), but is otherwise an accurate description of the facts.
- justizin 12y ago
  It would be a stinging defeat for their expensive lobbyists, who will be fired. Comcast, Time Warner, AT&T, and Verizon won't change much. A lot of people forget that AT&T, Verizon, and Google put forth Net Neutrality legislation that was perfectly good, but limited temporarily to "wireline" services, because they wanted time to regulate wireless. That was like three or four years ago, so the argument at the time that we couldn't wait for wireless regulation is completely insolvent, since we also still don't have wireless regulation, and Title II is unlikely to cover wireless services, at least in this round - though I could be proven wrong. Look, I'm an anti-capitalist, anti-corporate activist, but most people, fellow engineers included, have no idea what they're talking about with Net Neutrality. Most people are protecting the interests of Netflix, who is a major corporation with a massive technology budget dwarfed only by its' massive budget for paying the MPAA. But please, keep regurgitating Netflix's talking points about how noone will be able to start a company in their basement ever again - an odd complaint, since before Comcast throttled Netflix to something like 70% of the total Comcast network, Netflix themselves may have been causing problems for people trying to launch companies from basements or garages, or just check their e-mail. Title II is a victory for the internet, it should be a utility, I've been saying this for the entire 20 years of my career since I was involved in Time Warner's beta test of Roadrunner and noticed that as an entertainment service, it wasn't regulated like my ISDN line. But the way this is all going down, it's clear to me that something is happening behind the scenes, and I think it looks like Netflix pouring water into a bucket with a few drops of Net Neutrality.

adwf 12y ago

What I don't understand is how exactly ISPs managed to be declared not utilities. Does no-one remember the really old acoustic coupled modems where you had to literally pick up the phone (utility) and place it on the receiver? All that happened was that we started plugging the phone line directly into an integrated modem - it's still going down the phone line for most people. An ISP is a telecoms provider and should technically already be regulated as one...

deleted 12y ago
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snowwrestler 12y ago
I'm pretty sure telephone lines are indeed today regulated as utilities. That's why I can get DSL service from a company other than Verizon, even though Verizon owns all the phone lines in my neighborhood. No one ever put the phone modem on cable networks, though, or fiber optics, or wireless. None of those are regulated as utilities, so the only service providers on those lines are the companies who own the lines. This is a big reason Verizon has sunk almost all of their recent investment into FiOS and wireless.
kbenson 12y ago
Sort of? ISPs ran on top of telecom service, which itself ran on telecom infrastructure, not that differently than any business that received phone calls, except it utilized telecom more heavily. Later, with DSL, service was provided over the same infrastructure telecom used, blurring the line a bit. Additionally, by this point, the internet was becoming more important to daily life. Now, we have telecom and other services offered on top of the network service which is provided on infrastructure designed for networks, not telecom. So I would say, yes, an ISP is a telecoms provider, but they didn't really start that way. Edit: I'm being sort of loose with "telecom" here. I'm using more in the "what we regulate" sense than the "what the word means" sense.
- seanp2k2 12y ago
  I don't even think telecom is ambiguous or used loosely in this regard; comcast provides telephone service, and "telecom", short for "telecommunications", is defined as "communication over a distance by cable, telegraph, telephone, or broadcasting." So in this, every single ISP is a telecom

simon_weber 12y ago

Interesting. The race is now on between Wheeler's Title II proposal and Congress Republicans' rumored Title X proposal [0]. [0] http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/12/19/congress-wants-to-legislate-net-neutrality-heres-what-that-might-look-like/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/12/19...

seanp2k2 12y ago
My pessimistic prediction: FCC will go for Title II, a legal shitstorm will ensue, it will be determined somehow that they don't have the right to regulate ISPs in that way, then ISPs will start charging per-service and home internet will basically be like cell data plans, but worse (Google Maps requires the maps and navigation package!).

RA_Fisher 12y ago

One thing that disturbs me about the Net Neutrality discussion is that nobody's talking about what we might be giving up. I've learned a lot about unintended effects of regulation. I have some ideas about what those might be, like reduced infrastructure investment by the ISPs, but as a community this discussion seems absent. Are there others out there that are concerned about the unforeseen consequences like I am? In particular, it feels like Net Neutrality will remove the incentive for video streaming services to put investment into new and improved compression algorithms. I worry about streaming video squeezing out simpler tcp/ip.

ChrisAntaki 12y ago

Does anyone else see Title II as potentially opening the door to more competition? From a recent article: http://www.engadget.com/2015/01/01/google-letter-fcc-title-ii/ http://www.engadget.com/2015/01/01/google-letter-fcc-title-i... > Mountain View pointed out that if broadband internet access is declared to be a Title II service, then Google Fiber should be granted the same access as other utilities to poles and other essential infrastructure. It went on to say that doing so would actually "promote broadband deployment and competition."

wmf 12y ago
There are still a bunch of details like franchises and redlining. There's also the natural monopoly argument.
- exelius 12y ago
  Still not sure what you do in an overbuilding scenario. Those poles have physical restrictions such as weight and volume. You can't have 10 different telcos serve a neighborhood: there would just be too much gear on the pole. So how do you decide who gets the space on the poles? The sensible argument says you put them up for bid in an auction, but then the incumbents still have a huge sunk cost advantage.
  - mikecb 12y ago
    You spin out the vertical. If the consumers can support ten services, then those services should be able to support one infrastructure provider investing in better/stronger poles.
    - exelius 12y ago
      There would be an initial land rush if the poles were to be opened, and a large number of providers would likely fail sometime after that as the market shakes things out. Even if the market will converge on 3 or 4 providers, there may be initial demand for pole access by 10+ providers. Assuming the physical limitations on the poles are less than the demand, how should a regulatory body decide which providers get access and which ones don't? In the end, any shared infrastructure problem inevitably ends up with a limited franchise framework because it's the most efficient way to do it. The FCC has tried regulating through this framework for years via spectrum auctions, and all they've really done is provide a form of tax revenue from the big telecoms to the FCC. The spectrum is often sold with restrictions that are eventually waived quietly if the winners hold them for a little while, and they get sold to the big national players anyway.

Zizzle 12y ago

I'm a bit worried that these stories floating around about title 2 being imminent will give the monopolies time to throw more money at the problem to make it go away. i.e. "convince" Wheeler or get congress to pass a bill. Or it could be a ploy by Wheeler. Make noise about full regulation, then make the carriers think they have won some concession when he negotiates and implements something lesser.

debacle 12y ago

I feel like this has been the Obama Administration's plan all along, and that everything else has been mostly political theater - mostly to make ISPs look bad and force them to shoot themselves in the foot.

jostmey 12y ago
I disagree. My suspicion is that Tom Wheeler wants to dive deeper into the powers of government. By dragging out a decision on net neutrality he has brought the media spotlight to himself. Just think about how many people now know his name. He could probably run for a simple office now and win.
- debacle 12y ago
  I'm not sure how true that is. Generally heading something like the FCC is a bit of a death sentence to your political career. You are sort of cordoned into the bureaucrat/lobbyist pool.
  - omarali 12y ago
    http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/11/f-c-c-commissioner-to-join-comcast http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/11/f-c-c-commi...

skuhn 12y ago

The large American ISPs (i.e. cable and telephone companies) have made an enormous mistake with their recent attempts to create artificial network congestion to extract rent, and I'm glad that the FCC seems to think that this isn't acceptable behavior. I still wish that the resolution wasn't government regulation. Everyone should be able to access the Internet, at a reasonable cost that covers their usage and makes a reasonable profit. No packages, plans, quotas or other nonsense -- no limits whatsoever. The fundamental costs of building a network lie in the instantaneous bandwidth provided and the oversubscription ratio, not in how many bits you move in a month or whether your data is going to this site or that site. This is not how things work right now for a lot of people. Likewise, everyone should be able to serve content to these users, on equal footing relative to the legitimate costs that are being paid. If I'm YouTube, then I should pay (or make a mutually beneficial agreement to peer) for my transit, and my upstream providers should be incentivized to provide quality service (at risk of being replaced). This is how things work right now for most sites. I think the root problem is that there is competition on only one side, the service provider side, where you can choose from tens or hundreds of transit partners. This side is undergoing substantial consolidation (not good), but I believe a significant part of that is because they have to keep getting bigger to compete with Comcast, et. al. It's an arms race. End user connectivity, on the other hand, has already been extremely consolidated since the late 90's. There is almost no real competition in most markets, even if multiple providers exist. Yes, a lot of people have two or more choices for ISPs at home or work. Generally it's between the phone and the cable company (AT&T and Comcast where I live). AT&T is not competitive on performance with Comcast at all, not even remotely close. There are two other good options (who I always try to do business with, when I can) in the area: Sonic.net and Webpass. They are either limited in terms of performance or in availability (or both), and their respective userbases are a fraction of AT&T's or Comcast's. They both support network neutrality. Why do they support it when AT&T and Comcast don't? I think it's because they aren't monopolies who were gifted substantial control of Internet at public expense, they aren't trying to be paid two or three times for the same bandwidth, and they aren't trying to prop up giant unrelated dinosaur businesses on the backs of their Internet service fees. They're both in one business, and they compete for that business, and they know that if they fail to perform adequately then they will lose that business. This is what we need to bring to all ISPs everywhere in the country, and we need it way more than formal network neutrality laws. AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Time Warner did not build the Internet, so why do they get disproportionate control over it by virtue of having some buried copper that runs to my house? It is inconceivable to me that we might allow any of them to acquire more subscribers and more territories. They should be broken up. If a company is allowed to have a monopoly in an area, fine. Maybe that makes sense. They should not be allowed to have a monopoly (or duopoly) that spans half of the country though. Chop up Comcast ala Standard Oil: one Comcast for every state (or even better, for every major metropolitan area) they operate in. They may still try to play shenanigans with Internet connectivity, but their bargaining power is now vastly reduced.