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"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 a

"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.
  - mrfusion 12y ago
    What do you mean about netflix pouring water?
    - justizin 12y ago
      I'm implying that they are "watering down" the legislation. If you aren't a native english speaker, this may not have come across clearly. My implication is that Netflix is trying to accomplish something in their interest which will be "flavored" as "Net Neutrality" (let's call it 'regulated internet', since I don't think purely neutral, unconfigured networks will yield our goals), and that they are using sympathetic arguments with little connection to the actual legislation or substantial issues at question to distract us all, as an act of misdirection, like a magician. The unfortunate result may be that we have something that looks and smells like Net Neutrality, but is empty, serves corporate interests, does not address the things on the protest signs everyone is posting on Facebook, and we will have paid for it with our own misguided moral outrage.
      - slang800 12y ago
        In that case, someone should read through the legislation that Netflix is actually proposing, and explain how it isn't really about Net Neutrality... then we can blame Netflix for misdirecting us and propose some real, useful legislation.
        dragonwriter 12y ago
        > someone should read through the legislation that Netflix is actually proposing Has Netflix proposed legislation? AFAICT, they've not proposed specific legislation or regulation, but filed formal comment [0] on the last FCC proposal opposing its approach and advocating regulation under Title II authority (but without specifically advocating details of what the regulations should be adopted under Title II authority.) [0] http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/view?id=7521491186 http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/view?id=7521491186
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
bunderbunder 12y ago
> Title II is good for anyone who wants to build a good Internet Service Provider. So that'd mean it's good for, at most, anyone who isn't in the set { Comcast, Time Warner, AT&T, Verizon, CenturyLink, ... }.
- exelius 12y ago
  No, not really. It would likely commoditize the service of providing Internet addressable IP routing and set it on a path for cutting all of the margin out of the business for the ISP, while likely doing nothing to cut the overall cost of the combined service to the consumer. The companies that own the lines would still take the lion's share of the profit under a title II scenario - they'd just take it in different ways than they do today. Line sharing rules weren't effective for DSL, and I don't see how the same dance played out 15 years later would have any different results. We need to do something, I just don't think title II is the right way to go.
rayiner 12y ago
Define "good internet service provider"? ISP's are businesses. Businesses exist to make money. Regulations like net neutrality push in the direction of turning ISP's into "dumb pipes" and there's no money in building "dumb" anything, and certainly not enough to justify the tens of billions of dollars ISPs invest every year into their networks.[1] Differentiation and bundling is something you see in many areas of the tech sector. Facebook doesn't open up their platform and infrastructure for anyone to access however they want. They carefully control the points of entries onto their service, and affiliations with other services, etc. At the end of the day, users are willing to pay, e.g., $15/month for Netflix, and don't care about who gets what part of that money. Fights over net neutrality and copyright are about how this $15 gets split up between: content creators, infrastructure providers, and user-facing websites. [1] If you look into the actual finances of cable and fiber, you'll find, for example, that both Verizon FiOS and Charter would be losing tons of money if they didn't bundle video services along with internet access.
- rosser 12y ago
  Sonic.net is, for my money (and they get my money, rather than Comcast or someone else who would sell me a fatter, but less capable or otherwise somehow restricted, pipe for less money), a perfect example of a "good ISP". What makes them good? They act like a dumb pipe. They don't block things. They don't log things. They don't throttle things. They don't care what I use my service for. They fix things when things break. They stay out of my way. And, somehow, they manage to bring in enough money that they're deploying FTTP trials in multiple cities.
- belorn 12y ago
  > there's no money in building "dumb" anything Historically, there have been many successful utility providers that earned a lot of money producing simple products. Telephone companies, power companies, and oil refineries, neither won a stronghold by producing "smart" products. Most however did produce illegal monopolies.
  - rayiner 12y ago
    1) Utility providers have historicaly been legal monopolies. I.e. in return for rate regulation, they get protection from competition. 2) The telephone network was a marvel of engineering at the time. Same for the power grid, power plants, oil refineries, etc. That infrastructure is the product of huge amounts of "hard engineering."

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.
- mrfusion 12y ago
  What do you mean about netflix pouring water?
  - justizin 12y ago
    I'm implying that they are "watering down" the legislation. If you aren't a native english speaker, this may not have come across clearly. My implication is that Netflix is trying to accomplish something in their interest which will be "flavored" as "Net Neutrality" (let's call it 'regulated internet', since I don't think purely neutral, unconfigured networks will yield our goals), and that they are using sympathetic arguments with little connection to the actual legislation or substantial issues at question to distract us all, as an act of misdirection, like a magician. The unfortunate result may be that we have something that looks and smells like Net Neutrality, but is empty, serves corporate interests, does not address the things on the protest signs everyone is posting on Facebook, and we will have paid for it with our own misguided moral outrage.
    - slang800 12y ago
      In that case, someone should read through the legislation that Netflix is actually proposing, and explain how it isn't really about Net Neutrality... then we can blame Netflix for misdirecting us and propose some real, useful legislation.
      - dragonwriter 12y ago
        > someone should read through the legislation that Netflix is actually proposing Has Netflix proposed legislation? AFAICT, they've not proposed specific legislation or regulation, but filed formal comment [0] on the last FCC proposal opposing its approach and advocating regulation under Title II authority (but without specifically advocating details of what the regulations should be adopted under Title II authority.) [0] http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/view?id=7521491186 http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/view?id=7521491186
- dragonwriter 12y ago

bunderbunder 12y ago

> Title II is good for anyone who wants to build a good Internet Service Provider. So that'd mean it's good for, at most, anyone who isn't in the set { Comcast, Time Warner, AT&T, Verizon, CenturyLink, ... }.

exelius 12y ago
No, not really. It would likely commoditize the service of providing Internet addressable IP routing and set it on a path for cutting all of the margin out of the business for the ISP, while likely doing nothing to cut the overall cost of the combined service to the consumer. The companies that own the lines would still take the lion's share of the profit under a title II scenario - they'd just take it in different ways than they do today. Line sharing rules weren't effective for DSL, and I don't see how the same dance played out 15 years later would have any different results. We need to do something, I just don't think title II is the right way to go.

rayiner 12y ago

Define "good internet service provider"? ISP's are businesses. Businesses exist to make money. Regulations like net neutrality push in the direction of turning ISP's into "dumb pipes" and there's no money in building "dumb" anything, and certainly not enough to justify the tens of billions of dollars ISPs invest every year into their networks.[1] Differentiation and bundling is something you see in many areas of the tech sector. Facebook doesn't open up their platform and infrastructure for anyone to access however they want. They carefully control the points of entries onto their service, and affiliations with other services, etc. At the end of the day, users are willing to pay, e.g., $15/month for Netflix, and don't care about who gets what part of that money. Fights over net neutrality and copyright are about how this $15 gets split up between: content creators, infrastructure providers, and user-facing websites. [1] If you look into the actual finances of cable and fiber, you'll find, for example, that both Verizon FiOS and Charter would be losing tons of money if they didn't bundle video services along with internet access.

rosser 12y ago
Sonic.net is, for my money (and they get my money, rather than Comcast or someone else who would sell me a fatter, but less capable or otherwise somehow restricted, pipe for less money), a perfect example of a "good ISP". What makes them good? They act like a dumb pipe. They don't block things. They don't log things. They don't throttle things. They don't care what I use my service for. They fix things when things break. They stay out of my way. And, somehow, they manage to bring in enough money that they're deploying FTTP trials in multiple cities.
belorn 12y ago
> there's no money in building "dumb" anything Historically, there have been many successful utility providers that earned a lot of money producing simple products. Telephone companies, power companies, and oil refineries, neither won a stronghold by producing "smart" products. Most however did produce illegal monopolies.
- rayiner 12y ago
  1) Utility providers have historicaly been legal monopolies. I.e. in return for rate regulation, they get protection from competition. 2) The telephone network was a marvel of engineering at the time. Same for the power grid, power plants, oil refineries, etc. That infrastructure is the product of huge amounts of "hard engineering."