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F.C.C. Is Expected to Propose Regulating the Internet as a Utility

• coldcode 12y ago
  Now we find out who has the deepest pockets.
  • robotnoises 12y ago
    Isn't that always the case, though?
    • coldcode 12y ago
      Sadly, yes.
• supergeek133 12y ago
  I get what they're trying to accomplish, we all want faster more reliable service, but as comparison is anyone 100% happy with their utility (power, water, etc)? That's where this is headed.
  • relaytheurgency 12y ago
    Before I got Google Fiber I was definitely happier with my water and electric than my service provider. Now I am probably actually still happier, but I don't have too many complaints about Google Fiber. I can't think of the last time I had an issue with my water! It's got 100% uptime.
    • res0nat0r 12y ago
      The issue most here are not mentioning is the sad state of affairs of much of the US public infrastructure. I wonder how old the pipes running to your house are and how long ago they should have been upgraded? This is also a possibility if internet becomes a utility.
      • relaytheurgency 12y ago
        Well, it doesn't really matter how old the pipes are as long as they continue working and provide water that meets the EPA/state standards for health. The US public water system is, for all intents and purposes, a miracle that most people do not even think about. They just rely on it. It's also your duty to replace the pipes leading up to your own house off of the mains in most cases, so I guess take it up with your landlord.
        • vonmoltke 12y ago
          > Well, it doesn't really matter how old the pipes are as long as they continue working and provide water that meets the EPA/state standards for health. Actually, it does. Water loss due to deteriorating infrastructure is becoming a significant issue as water supplies get strained. The EPA estimates that the average US water system loses 16% of their water during distribution, and about 75% of that can be prevented or recovered by maintaining and upgrading the systems.[1] Here in Texas this is a serious issue because our reservoirs are increasingly strained by population growth. [1] http://water.epa.gov/type/drink/pws/smallsystems/upload/epa816f13002.pdf http://water.epa.gov/type/drink/pws/smallsystems/upload/epa8...
      • freehunter 12y ago
        Do you remember the other day when the FCC changed the definition of broadband to 25/3? If they can continue to do that, we would no longer be beholden to the ISPs upgrading out of the goodness of their hearts. They would upgrade whenever their regulating agency told them they had to.
      • forgotpasswd3x 12y ago
        Uh, there's already a lot of network infrastructure that's the equivalent of "old pipes" that should have been upgraded long ago, at least in my area. I can't see why you'd expect this to make it any worse than it already is.
  • mjs2600 12y ago
    I have a lot less issues with all of my utilities combined than I have with comcast...
  • markbao 12y ago
    Depends on where you live, I suppose. I have zero problems with my ConEd power and whoever supplies my water, and I find the pricing pretty reasonable. My power supplier even offers different energy sources to use other than the standard one, which honestly blows my mind. And then I call into Time Warner spend more time trying to get them to understand what I'm talking about than I've ever spent on the phone with my other utilities.
    • tptacek 12y ago
      I also have generally positive experiences with power company employees. On the other hand: i. I can't fire my power company, nor can I ever really expect to gain that ability. ii. As nice and hardworking as the power company employees are, there's still only one main power run for the 1/8th of Oak Park that I live in, and any time a tree goes down in the alley along that run, or a squirrel detonates a transformer along it, I lose power for 6-8 hours. My block has a truly awful electric service uptime. It's not poor customer service I worry about. It's a total lack of infrastructure investment.
      • pluma 12y ago
        Wait, you can't chose between different power companies in the US? Even in socialist Europe that isn't normally a problem. I can choose between at least a dozen different providers of electricity, and at least half a dozen providers of Internet and landline telephone access. And that's just in the rural parts of the country. Granted most of the infrastructure is centralized, but that doesn't stop competition on extending it. Maybe the problem isn't whether Internet access should be regulated as a utility service but simply that utility services in the US are crap?
        • lutorm 12y ago
          You used to be able to choose. Then http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis happened.
          • 12y ago
  • mey 12y ago
    I'm actually very happy with my power, water and sewer. The only utility I currently hate is garbage which I blame mostly on WM.
  • punkcoder 12y ago
    When I call the water company, I don't talk to some guy in India who has never heard of my state, let alone my city. When the power and water go out, the service isn't great but compared to my internet provider it would be a huge improvement. YMMV.
    • brandonmenc 12y ago
      I don't think net neutrality will dictate that support staff be located in America.
      • sliverstorm 12y ago
        No, but part of the idea is that you will get small local providers again (like you did fifteen to twenty years ago), and five-man companies don't usually outsource tech support to India.
        • briandear 12y ago
          That ship has sailed. There's be no margin in the business. That's why you don't have little water utility startups popping up everywhere.
      • punkcoder 12y ago
        The statement was more in the direction that when it's a utility local people / municipality are responsible for the maintenance of that system, local people means that there is a far greater chance of getting local, mostly because there is someone local with _responsibility_ for keeping it working.
        • brandonmenc 12y ago
          I worked at a utility, the phone company (GTE), in the mid-90s. Our call centers, while domestic, were certainly not local. Customers in Muskegon, MI were always shocked that we didn't know what local street they were talking about. How could we? We were in Pennsylvania. I don't think anyone has run a truly local call support center, for anything, in decades.
  • moskie 12y ago
    Maybe not 100%. But whatever percent it is, it is a higher percent than the one I attribute to Comcast.
  • HelloMcFly 12y ago
    I'm not 100% happy with my utility companies, but I'm 500% more satisfied with them than any cable company I've ever had.
    • cranklin 12y ago
      I can dump my cable company if they piss me off. I can't do that with my utility companies
      • lutorm 12y ago
        I can too, and then not have cable. At least with the utility company, I can put up PV panels and live off grid.
        • VLM 12y ago
          Say goodbye to your occupancy permit, which will probably cause mortgage default. You won't be kicked out of your house for canceling cable.
        • cranklin 12y ago
          as if electricity is the only utility, right?
      • fletchowns 12y ago
        For a lot of people, they can't dump their cable company if they piss them off, because that's the only option they have available.
      • rkuykendall-com 12y ago
        Most Americans can't dump their cable company.
      • bratsche 12y ago
        In my area, the cable provider is the only one that offers somewhat fast speeds. Whenever they overcharge me and I spend hours sorting it out (this has happened a few times) with them I wish I could switch, but DSL is just not fast enough for working remotely. I don't have other options for all my other utilities, but so far they have overcharged me and screwed things up royally exactly zero times.
  • ceejayoz 12y ago
    > I get what they're trying to accomplish, we all want faster more reliable service, but as comparison is anyone 100% happy with their utility (power, water, etc)? I am. My water is clean and I've never had an outage. My power is reasonably cheap and quite reliable. The state doesn't allow either one to raise rates exorbitantly from year to year, either, and despite that both have made major upgrades to their facilities in the last few years.
    • spiritplumber 12y ago
      I'm surprised at how reliable utilities are in America. I was in a low income neighborhood in San Antonio during university, and had maybe 2 blackouts in 3 years.
      • pluma 12y ago
        Where are you from exactly? I live in Europe and 2 blackouts in 3 years would still be an outrage. (To be fair, we have less natural disasters.)
        • soccerdave 12y ago
          The length of the blackout would probably need to be given to provide some perspective. 2 30 minute blackouts would be much easier to deal with than 1 3 day blackout.
        • sliverstorm 12y ago
          We're missing a lot of context. San Antonio is in Texas, which means these could have been rolling blackouts, one of the last-ditch efforts employed by power companies during record summer temperature spikes (which translate to monumental load spikes in the form of A/C)
          • mbreese 12y ago
            Or it could be weather related (like most outages), or a bad transformer, or a car running into a pole, or a ton of things... So, you're right that we're missing a lot of context - including the duration. A 30 min outage due to an accident is very different from a 3 day outage due to a storm. And like you said, AC can be a big drain on the grid during the summer. (Disclaimer: I'm not sure what the weather in San Antonio is like...)
  • supergeek133 12y ago
    Agree with all of you, was just trying to gauge the difference. The government regulates the utilities pretty tight, but there is also little to no room for competition in those spaces anymore either. Which is one thing that's improving service in Google Fiber markets.
  • Shivetya 12y ago
    As in, better be damn happy with the speed you have now because you ain't going to get faster anytime soon. Well unless your lucky and someone politically connected on your street. Going back to the days before cable, when high speed was whatever the regulated its a utility phone company decided I was allowed to have There is no free lunch and regulation will just mean normalization at best, to the lowest allowed numbers. People below the allowed numbers will eventually be put on a schedule where their area will be upgraded, after meetings and such mostly all not public. You might get lucky and see movement in five years. Where they really need to be acting is mobile data. This is where the real thievery is going on. I am all for having no fast or slow lanes, but if regulation comes out dictating speeds you can guarantee the lowest allowed levels will be met with gusto
    • sliverstorm 12y ago
      Going back to the days before cable, when high speed was whatever the regulated its a utility phone company decided I was allowed to have What did you get, and what did you want instead?
    • bsder 12y ago
      > As in, better be damn happy with the speed you have now because you ain't going to get faster anytime soon. Yeah, well my internet speed has been stagnant in all the areas I spend decent amounts of time for basically the last 5 years anyway. Except where Google Fiber threatens to come in. So, we can revisit this question when Google Fiber is a choice for 80% of the US. And, Google fiber might be exempt because it won't be a cable provider. That would be an interesting thing, now, wouldn't it?
  • djrogers 12y ago
    The FCC doesn't regulate power and water, what they're talking about is making to Telco regulation - AKA Title II. The same regulation that left the telephone system unchanged for near 50 years, and made it near-legal to get the cell system off the ground until dramatic changes were made. I'm very torn on this - I want net neutrality, but I have zero faith in the ability of a bunch of unelected bureaucrats to write 10,000 pages of regulations that will make things better.
  • benmorris 12y ago
    I get what you're saying, but living in rural Indiana I could say yes basically. Our water, gas and power companies here locally are coop non profits and the employees are residents (and users themselves). The whole experience dealing with these entities are night and day when compared to say Comcast or Verizon.
  • amputect 12y ago
    My tap water is clean and delicious and I have never, ever had a problem with it. I have never experienced an unscheduled service interruption with my water, and scheduled service interruptions are very rare and advertised well in advance. My electricity is stable and reliable, and any power outages I've experienced have been brief, and exclusively due to exceptional weather events. I'm also a Comcast customer, and I would say that I have some sort of partial or total service interruption (internet is completely gone, or set top box stops working) on average, once every other week or so. These outages are usually relatively brief (a few minutes), but at least once a year I lose one or both services for 6 hours or more. Plus the internet speed varies wildly from "high-end dialup modem" at the low end, to "significantly less than the advertised value" at the high end. Needless to say, I have never actually experienced the advertised speeds. If I got the same service from my utilities as I did from Comcast, I would end up brushing my teeth with raw sewage about once a month, and trying to toast bread would occasionally cause a power dip that would brown-out every other outlet in my house. I probably wouldn't be able to shower some nights because the cold water pressure would be unusably low, and I would have to reset every clock in my house a couple times a month. The one similarity is that I would still be unable to shop around for better service, because Comcast is the only option in my area. If you want a TLDR, it's that I would figuratively kill to get Internet service that's even just half as good as my utility service, because right now my internet service is much worse than that.
    • nickff 12y ago
      Why would a lack of service by an internet provider be comparable to a utility pumping sewage? Shouldn't you be looking at water restrictions which the utilities blame on drought? This is the most similar type of event to the Comcast outage which you are describing. Both could have been prevented through better planning, capital expenditures, and forethought. If this is the comparison, both Comcast and many water providers fail, though the internet providers have gradually improving products, while the utilities do not (as far as I know). Most industries' products do not fall from the sky, yet they still manage to provide an adequate supply.
      • xamuel 12y ago
  • joshuaheard 12y ago
    I live in Washington state where it rains constantly, buy my water bill is about $200/month. Likewise, my power bill for a family of 5 is $400 per month. My power company still uses power poles to transmit electricity, like they have done is the 1800s. Meanwhile, we lost electricity for days during the last storm. I argue that with competition, electric companies could innovate their distribution, ie bury the power lines, and the price of water would be cheaper.
  • bluthru 12y ago
    >but as comparison is anyone 100% happy with their utility (power, water, etc)? Yes. Do you remember what happened in California when power was deregulated and Enron was causing brownouts? Compared to my private utilities (phone and home internet) I freaking love my public utilities.
  • bratsche 12y ago
    I don't know about 100%, but I am certainly much happier with my electric, water, and gas providers than I am with my cable provider.
  • pnathan 12y ago
    The telcos in the US are uniformly obnoxious and offensive in their delight in advertising, fees, etc, and trying to rip me off in all sorts of ways. Without a doubt, if the City Internet & Federal Mobile Phone Service were as "just works" and "no marketing" as the septic system and the water system, it would be a measurable quality of life increase. It's also worth contemplating if the brute fact of the matter is that public goods & natural monopolies (cable companies, cell towers perhaps) should be regulated as a utility. Particularly if the preferred mechanisms for interacting with a government in the US require/highly suggest the use of a computer or cell phone. If that assumption is being made (and it is), then it's not just a luxury, or even a popular service... it's becoming a common utility.
  • mbreese 12y ago
    I have power with 99.9% reliability and my water is usually pretty good quality. The only issues I've had with water (ever) is that recently there has been so much conservation in CA that the system wasn't designed to handle (ironic, no?). So, I'd be okay with that service.
  • 0xdeadbeefbabe 12y ago
    Someone should downvote you for implying the government is not satisfying us 100%.
  • ForHackernews 12y ago
    > is anyone 100% happy with their utility (power, water, etc)? Yes, absolutely. My water is clean, potable and available with at least 99.99% uptime. Same goes for electricity, which is only slightly less reliable (down for a few hours in a major blizzard several years ago) If my electricity were slightly cheaper, that'd be nice, but it's still less than half my cable/internet bill. Power is already deregulated here, so if I really cared, I could shop around for a cheaper rate, or for electricity generated from renewable sources.
• thissideup 12y ago
  Yeah the government's goal is totally a "free and open Internet." Except that part of the government dedicated to vacuuming up and storing and analyzing every signal from every network-enabled device on the planet.
  • ceejayoz 12y ago
    That has nothing to do with whether or not it's a utility. They're clearly already capable of doing so.
    • thissideup 12y ago
      Explain how the two ideas aren't related.
      • ceejayoz 12y ago
        Classifying the Internet as a utility doesn't change the various Three Letter Agencies' ability nor motiviations to surveil traffic.
        • thissideup 12y ago
          You are restating exactly what you already said. Maybe you didn't understand. Taxation implies increased tracking and auditing of the good being taxed, in this context surveillance could be justifiable. Perhaps you're unable to imagine these consequences, but your claim that they have nothing to do with one another is just ignorant.
          • ceejayoz 12y ago
            Our Internet traffic is already heavily surveilled without this entirely hypothetical Internet tax you're proposing. The phone system is a utility, and it's certainly not the fact that it's taxable that makes the TLAs interested in wiretapping it.
• CurtHagenlocher 12y ago
  What a coincidence; I just posted this to my Facebook feed yesterday: Dealing with ISPs (and mobile providers, for that matter) is a never-ending hell of time-sucking and abysmal customer service. Communications as a business has some unfortunate features that drive its pathologies. The overhead of the infrastructure is very high and the marginal cost for adding a customer is relatively low. When there's more than one option, there's very little practical difference to distinguish the competitors from each other. Whether it's wireless or wired, I suspect we're doomed to be subjected to this kind of bullshit until the businesses in question are treated and regulated as the basic utilities that they have become. I don't know anyone who's frustrated with their electrical or gas service.
  • djrogers 12y ago
    Wait a second, every single negative you've described here can also be applied to other utilities who have been regulated under title II for as long as it's existed. They've yet to find a way to 'regulate' human decency and good customer service...
    • lightbritefight 12y ago
      Adding viable competitors is how. Title 2 will make it so other companies have a chance to exist on the government sponsored lines. Once Comcast sees its lifeblood spilling into the streets, Im betting their CS will be as sweet as pecan pie.
      • skuhn 12y ago
        Title II regulation will not necessarily open up the copper wiring to your house to competitors. The FCC is expected to forebear a lot of the Title II rules, and that may well be one of them.
      • briandear 12y ago
        But what's the incentive? How many people want to start water companies? If it's highly regulated the margins will also disappear. It turns it into a commodity. It isn't like you can do any real innovation.
• djrogers 12y ago
  Setting aside the ultimate politics and ramifications of this, it is interesting (and kind of scary) to watch the fight between a non-elected bureaucracy and our elected house of representatives to regulate the internet. Congress seems to be completely incapable of doing more than grandstanding, while the bureaucrats may wind up dramatically increasing their own power with a single stroke of their unelected pens. It's no wonder we have many times more regulations than laws in this country... If I got to 'regulate' who I had power over on a regular basis, there are a lot of people who would suddenly find themselves inexplicably under Title Darren. Human nature.
  • SapphireSun 12y ago
    Fwiw, the reason we have more regulations than laws is because Congress likes to enact laws dictating things in a somewhat general manner and delegates authority for implementing those concepts to experts. Naturally, the specific regulations are more numerous than the general guidance. While there may be too many regulations, it's a red herring to claim that simply because there are more, this is a sign of dysfunction.
  • skywhopper 12y ago
    It's worth noting that these "unelected bureaucrats" are nominated by a President for limited terms and confirmed by the Senate, and that all powers they have are bestowed upon them by Congress and can be revoked, and that their regulations have to fit within restrictions that are defined and may be revised by Congress. It's certainly not pretty, but it's not unaccountable, and it seems to be moving things in the generally correct direction. We can hope, anyway.
    • DanielBMarkham 12y ago
      (Note: I support the move. However I believe you may be overstating your case a bit.) Accountable in what way? Based on either 1) Doing something so horrendous that would require direct Congressional intervention, which has never (?) happened before? 2) Waiting until a completely new Senate or president is elected, which is basically a 4-8 year cycle? In theory all of these folks are accountable, sure, but in actuality the entire gimmick here is that the bureaucrats can make all the tough choices while Congress grandstands and makes speeches. That way the work gets done and there's nobody really to blame. Some parts of that system are pretty good! Some parts are not. But it's only accountable in the strictest sense. There is only an infinitesimal chance that any citizen could have any influence at all over these types of machinations.
• skywhopper 12y ago
  The major critique quoted here comes from David Farber of Carnegie-Mellon, who worries that classifying Internet access under Title II will allow it to be taxed. If that's the worst thing you can think of, we're in good shape.
  • dkhenry 12y ago
    The power to tax is the power to destroy.
    • skylan_q 12y ago
      I don't understand how people can disagree with this. He's perfectly correct. How often does one cite the price of cigarettes to quit smoking them?
      • glesica 12y ago
        That's nonsensical. It all depends on the utility of the smoker. Cigarette taxes are, in theory at least, Pigouvian taxes in the sense that the goal is to reduce the harm caused by smoking. They accomplish this in two ways, first, by providing funds to deal with the associated medical costs and two, by reducing the number of people who choose to smoke. Whether you agree with the assessed level of negative externalities or not (I don't, actually), the tax hasn't "destroyed" anything. Smoking still exists. Fewer people get sufficient utility from smoking to go on doing so, but that's the point of the tax in this case. Too many people were smoking previously due to market inefficiencies. Now the "correct" (again, I believe the externalities were lower than many people believe they were) number of people are smoking.
      • alexqgb 12y ago
        It's not that he's incorrect. It's that his observation is generalized to the point of being a useless distraction from this particular conversation. Had he indicated how the potentially destructive power of taxation is actually being used destructively and deliberately in this particular case, he'd have said something knowledgeable and interesting. But of course, that's not what happened.
• higherpurpose 12y ago
  Wait, doesn't calling the Internet a utility mean all data will be metered by the MB from now on? Or does that not apply here? If it does, wouldn't that give carriers exactly what they wanted - the ability to charge video providers much more than they would say a news website? The idea behind the whole net neutrality movement was to have "all you can eat plans" where all data is treated the same. What if now we get the "all data is treated the same" part, but not the "all you can eat" one? Another issue: government spying. I know the ISP's/carriers have given the government virtually everything they've asked for, including direct access to the cables for the plain-text data + the recent cookie tracking inserted into people's traffic, but some of them have refused to do much of it, like Sonic, and I think Google takes a similar approach, fighting for users' rights, even if Verizon and AT&T do not. So what does it mean now that the government classifies all Internet under Title 2. What can we expect in terms of surveillance? And does it make it much easier to force all ISP's to comply with certain surveillance requests?
  • wmf 12y ago
    Phone calls aren't required to be metered and neither will be the Internet. But yes, metering is generally considered to be neutral, although not necessarily a good idea. CALEA has existed for years and I haven't heard that Title II legalizes dragnet surveillance.
  • Amezarak 12y ago
    > Wait, doesn't calling the Internet a utility mean all data will be metered by the MB from now on? Or does that not apply here? No, it does not mean metered Internet, which is already increasingly common in the US - though usually in the form of x GB for $y, with $z/GB overages. This has actually become incredibly common. There isn't a single ISP in my state that doesn't have data caps with metered Internet thereafter, or, in the case of my ISP, mandatory upgrades (though even then, the most expensive plan has a cap of 1TB.) > So what does it mean now that the government classifies all Internet under Title 2. What can we expect in terms of surveillance? Nothing changes.
  • Eric_WVGG 12y ago
    I think it helps to consider it a utility in the same way that the US system of roads and highways is “a utility” (information superhighway, you hoary old chestnut)
• IanDrake 12y ago
  That will be a sad day. Internet technology still has a lot of room to improve before the government steps in and kills all market forces that encourage those improvements. If you don't like your current service levels now, just wait until the government gets involved.
  • supergeek133 12y ago
    That's what I'm worried about, you see all the news stories of the current ISPs magically improving once Google Fiber moves in. Any 'utility' by government terms is highly regulated and has no market competition. Hell, they have to ask a judge before they can increase rates or change anything. Ha.
  • IanDrake 12y ago
    I realize HN is full of idealistic kids who never lived through the government taking control of something to "improve" it, so your down votes are forgiven.
    • wmf 12y ago
      Whether you're right or not, your point is shallow and tired. But I guess the "groundhog day" nature of HN resetting every discussion to zero every day encourages such comments.
    • EarthLaunch 12y ago
      Oh, they believe in it. They don't know how the market works, no, but they know they want to destroy it. Their goal is to stop progress, in the name of progress. It's not that they're aware of their goal - they're deliberately remaining ignorant in order to be able to support something so reprehensible.
    • patronagezero 12y ago
      No worries, plenty agree with you, but few fight the flood here on HN any longer. I never vote and rarely comment. The whole premise of comment voting is groupthink 3.0. I cherish down-votes on HN, just like I cherish disagreeing with the idiocy that has plagued the progress of the US for decades, they'll keep swimming with the flow and wondering why things only get worse. It's like being the stern of the boat and wondering why wherever the country has been is shit, and looking at the bow as being to blame. You'll all get your turn at the bow of the ship, and I promise you it'll be far worse than your parents or grandparents.
• DanielBMarkham 12y ago
  As a libertarian who knows tech, I'm on the government's side here, although I'm grimacing while I'm supporting them. It's simply the lesser of two evils. One thing to help clarify the debate if you're talking to somebody who opposes this move: do not confuse the issue of how the government should be treating utilities in general with whether or not the internet is a utility. We can have a grand old time debating the overreach of a regulatory statist society, but that has got jack squat to do with the issue at hand. Is the internet more like electricity, where you pay so much for a bucketful, and then you can do whatever you want with it? Or is it more like Star Wars, where George Lucas and Disney can charge us 17 times at 17 different rates for different versions of what is essentially the same thing? These are two different discussions to be had; do not let folks conflate them into one.
  • ancap 12y ago
    >As a libertarian who knows tech, I'm on the government's side here That's an oxymoron. The core reason internet service sucks for the vast majority of Americans is because state and local governments grant monopoly status to the ISP cartels. This move by the FCC does nothing to remedy that and consequently will not solve the problem. If they require higher "standard" of internet without doing away with the monopolies, for the vast majority of people this will only mean a higher bill.
    • dublinben 12y ago
      There are no government granted ISP monopolies.
      • magila 12y ago
        There are no de jure ISP monopolies, but municipalities routinely demand franchise terms which only the incumbent provider could possibly satisfy (100% coverage, large up-front fees, etc).
        • Retra 12y ago
          This reminds me of how a military contracts are assigned: Write a spec of what you need, and have companies bid to meet it. Unfortunately, if a company gets a good connection, they can just have the spec drafted in such a way that only that company could meet it. And thus, corruption.
• grellas 12y ago
  Law does not operate in a vacuum because, in the end, it is closely tied to power - to fine, to jail, to sanction, to regulate and restrict - and that makes it scary when it becomes unhinged from a sense of principle in its application. Is it wise, then, to grant unchecked, plenary power over the internet to the government in the name of trusting that those who currently exercise the F.C.C.'s power will exercise that power with self-imposed restraint? Lord Acton's dictum that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely comes to mind in considering the implications of this step. Once we grant that the F.C.C. has open-ended authority to do what it wants with the internet, where is the formal protection against abuse and who will exercise it. Certainly the courts will not. The Telecommunications Act being relied upon here certainly grants the formal authority to do this. Those who passed that Act did so 80 years ago and never contemplated that it would be so applied. But the courts will say, it was for Congress to make the law and for the appointed agency to administer it within the bounds laid out by the legislature, and that means this exercise of authority will be upheld. But so too will any attempt by the F.C.C. to impose detailed regulations over pricing, usage, and all sorts of other areas that those who favor a free and open internet clearly do not desire. Once this step is taken, all formal protections against abuses of this type are gone. What, then, is the remaining form of protection. It is that we choose to trust those who exercise open-ended power to use "restraint." They assure us they would never change the way things are. They will never succumb to the power and influence of lobbyists. They will never exercise so vast a power that is given to them without checks for any corrupt motive. After all, governments worldwide and throughout history have demonstrated that they can be trusted with unchecked power without abusing their citizens. And so we can all rest easily knowing that our benign government is and will always remain in good hands and will always keeps its promise. After all, who needs the formal protections of the rule of law when you can give all over to the discretion of leaders who will be wielding the very powers whose potential abuse we all fear. So, for those who want net neutrality at any cost, the end justifies the means and any fear in principle of giving unchecked theoretical power to an unaccountable governmental agency goes out the window in pursuit of the immediate goal of net neutrality and in trusting current leaders who tell us that they really never intend to use all those unchecked powers. I truly hope that is so but I am very saddened that people never learn the lessons of history about what can happen when political leaders suddenly find themselves with vast amounts of unchecked power. The free internet we know today will be utterly dependent on their good graces. I for one am not so sanguine as others about where this may lead.
• Zigurd 12y ago
  That's a peculiar choice of word for an article title. The FCC can't "regulate the Internet." The FCC can regulate service providers in the US in certain limited ways.
  • skylan_q 12y ago
    They're not changing what the Internet is, only how it's provided. They don't realize the way that the Internet is provided is the essence of the Internet itself.
• dkhenry 12y ago
  I understand the desire to regulate the internet as a utility, but are they going to actually regulate it like a utility or are they going to call it a common carrier and then just make up a few BS rules that need to be followed. I have a sinking feeling that all this will result in is a situation where monopolies are given out to the existing players and no one is forced to do anything to upgrade the existing service. This isn't like a water utility where the product has little variance. Even now in the marketplace there is huge variance in the quality of the product I can buy ( I am one of the lucky few with choices of providers ). I have a feeling my area is just going to get given a blanket monopoly to Comcast and I will have to deal with a crappy connection forever with no hope of another company ever gaining traction to replace them.
  • skylan_q 12y ago
    I have a sinking feeling that all this will result in is a situation where monopolies are given out to the existing players and no one is forced to do anything to upgrade the existing service. It's naive to think it would be anything but this. We like the Internet as it is today but for some reason we need to have the FCC control it in order to try to keep it the way it is.
    • skuhn 12y ago
      We like the way it is (or rather, the way it was 15 years ago), but the cat appears to be out of the bag. Comcast, Verizon, et. al. all have giant dying industries to support on the backs of our Internet access fees, and they are going to extract every penny of value from their local and regional monopolies. I don't especially want the government involved, but doing nothing is not going to maintain the status quo. Destroying local monopolies that have sway over a global network is a much better move in my opinion.
    • zanny 12y ago
      Except we don't like the Internet we have today, where net neutrality is always teetering on an edge into an abyss of sponsored channels and provider blocking on a whim. That, and we don't like how the major telecoms exploit us all for huge profits off the backs of decade old taxpayer funded infrastructure they got through political manipulation and now sit on for free money. The golden age of Internet access was in the late 90s, when over-twisted pair dialup was still a thing but the regulations meant the wire runners had to license it out at fair rates, so you would get a hundred ISPs offering you service for dollars a month. But that could never scale, and we ended up with DSL and Cable Internet without any of that open market aspect where we are all taken advantage of for corporate profit. That is not to say that Title II is anything good. It does not solve the central problem that ISPs have no incentive to improve the networks, all it does is compel fixed rate competition, which is only good for keeping us exactly where we are, when the technologies already exist to give us so much better.
• twoodfin 12y ago
  Wheeler is apparently basing the 'light touch' Title II regulation on similar regulations applied to mobile video (but not mobile data). Does anyone have some examples of the applications of mobile video being so regulated (The YouTube app on my phone? Probably not?) the kinds of regulations imposed and what the results have been?
• martin1975 12y ago
  Thank you President Obama for actively supporting this. Let's hope the Internet is declared what it has been for a while - a commoditized utility. No walled gardens please!
• nitinics 12y ago
  I wonder if autonomous local mesh networks and hyper local mesh networks which is essentially a network of networks would fall under the term "Internet" and under these regulations. That would certainly stop innovation on that front (?)
• cubano 12y ago
  I think the radio analogy is spot on, and I really believe that the endgame to all this government interest may very well be the same sort of regulatory control that the FCC now imposes in radio stations and content via the [1] Communications Act of 1934. This can easily been seen as a power grab by plutocrats who want to start filtering and controlling the money making and informational aspect of the web, and while I am, of course, speculating about this outcome, I think in general, it has been on the back burner for years. You know, to protect the children and all that FUD. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Act_of_1934 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Act_of_1934
  • unprepare 12y ago
    To me there seems to be a distinct difference between actively broadcasting a signal(radio) and allowing access to those who request it(internet) Radio works by beaming signals all over their coverage area. those signals are pushed to everyone. Whereas, a website isn't just sending its html to every IP and port it can find, it waits for a request and responds accordingly. This seems to be a fundamental distinction to me, but one that would likely be easily obscured by politicking and misinformation campaigns if that were the ultimate goal. Interesting thought though, as we do see the UK beginning to move towards this more hands-on internet regulation all of a suddden
    • cubano 12y ago
      To me there seems to be a distinct difference between actively broadcasting a signal(radio) and allowing access to those who request it(internet) Now, that's a very good point, but can't the very act of turning a radio dial be the 1930's equivalence of typing in a URI or clicking a link? Wired magazine published an article in the 90's about the parallels between radio and the "new" internet, and it was filled with direct analogies between the two and how governments eventually took control and started regulating licenses and content, for the most part. I am unable to find a link to that long article, but the ideas contained in it have stuck with me for a long time.
  • logn 12y ago
    The FCC is able to regulate broadcast content because the courts found it constitutional due to the pervasive nature. Reclassification of ISPs does not affect the pervasiveness.
• greggyb 12y ago
  To me, net neutrality is pretty much a red herring. I have had good and bad internet service in my life. The least reliable was at my somewhat rural childhood home from TWC. The best is my current connection from that most reviled of companies, Comcast. I have had no service interruptions, and I get a reliable 50Mbps at all times of day (I check regularly with speed tests and checking Torrent activity). The reason my internet service (and customer service experience) has been so good here is that I have two viable alternative providers, a high speed DSL carrier offering similar speeds and rates in the city, and a local fiber provider (recently introduced 10Gbps connection - yes you are reading that correctly). While I would prefer to have no rate limiting based on usage or content, I don't view this as some inalienable right. There is a price I'm willing to pay for that service, but there is also a price low enough where I'm happy to accept rate limiting. I'd like to have the choice. The problem seems to be that the competition which gives me the service I'm happy with and the regulation regarding whether I am even allowed to reason about my preferences as in the above paragraph keep getting tied up with one another. To me the biggest benefit comes from having multiple options in providers. A legal monopoly who can't do rate limiting can still give me awful service. Many providers who can rate limit will most likely give me service I'm happy with, even if the plan is rate limited. The history of utility regulation is rife with cases of legally enforced monopolies.
  • lbenes 12y ago
    Yes, of course if most American were as lucky as you, net neutrality wouldn't be an issue. But the reality is that most of us are under a monopoly.[1] And it will take years and billions of dollars in infrastructure to enable the kind of competition that you are already enjoying. After suffering under Comcast's Netflix throttling last year, I don't want to hear utopian talk about encouraging competition. I want laws that fix the problem today by making those damn QoS firewall rules illegal. Of course I also want regulations and incentives to encourage broadband competition, but in the mean time net neutrality is a important stop gap. [1] http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2014/02/17/monopolizing-bandwidth/ http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2014/02/17/monopolizin...
    • greggyb 12y ago
• TheHypnotist 12y ago
  One part of me hates this because the idea of our government dipping their hands into what has become the major source of information, entertainment, conducting business, etc. is quite scary. We all know their tendency to fuck things up because of politics, money, stupidity, or a combination of any and all of these. On the other hand, I look at my other utilities and realize I have absolutely no complaints. Yeah, the power goes out from time to time, but that is just an inconvenience. As it stands, my internet is just as reliable as my power in terms of outages (not including the occasional speed fluctuation). As long as it doesn't turn into a pay for use type deal and sticks with the current model of pay for bandwidth I suppose I'd be ok with this. There are just too many different moving parts for the cynical and rational parts of my brain to agree on. Edit: Oh, and as long as censorship never becomes a thing.
  • donatj 12y ago
    You have no complaints about your utilities sure but when was the last time home phone for instance did anything new. Have you ever been excited about your power? I know I've been excited about my internet. Regulation just stands in the way of change.
    • TheHypnotist 12y ago
      This is true. But that's my point. It frightens me in some ways and in others I can see it not being so bad.
  • johnchristopher 12y ago
    > One part of me hates this because the idea of our government dipping their hands into what has become the major source of information, entertainment, conducting business, etc. is quite scary. We all know their tendency to fuck things up because of politics, money, stupidity, or a combination of any and all of these. 1. Who built the Internet, landlines and lobbied for electricity in the countryside in the 30's ? 2. Right, because politics, money and stupidity are nowhere to be found in the `private` world.
    • 12y ago
• kyrra 12y ago
  Does anyone know if this would impact the issues we saw between Netflix, Level3 and Verizon? My understanding of the original issues with Netflix and Verizon was that the interconnect between Netflix's peering company (Level 3) and Verizon wasn't big enough to handle the bandwidth that Netflix was attempting to pump out. In this case, Verizon was just refusing to upgrade that path and wanted to force Netflix to connect with them directly (get them to pay more money in some way. Is that the general problem Netflix had with Verizon? If so, how would Title II help this situation? Does Title II require these various companies to maintain the interconnects between their networks and other companies out there?
  • wtallis 12y ago
    The section of Title 2 that requires common carriers to publish their prices might extend to peering agreements. If so, it would totally shake up the current system of secret dealings and probably make it a lot harder for Verizon to pretend to be the victim.
  • spinlock 12y ago
    I wish I had a link to review this but I don't think that's the case. As I recall, Netflix published data showing that there wasn't actually a bandwidth problem and they offered to upgrade the equipment. They've ended up paying Verizon which is what verizon was really after.
    • kyrra 12y ago
      Level3 had a number of blog posts under the "open internet" category about their view of it. I believe this is the post where I gleaned the information from[0]. [0] http://blog.level3.com/open-internet/verizons-accidental-mea-culpa/ http://blog.level3.com/open-internet/verizons-accidental-mea...
• jeffdavis 12y ago
  What could possibly go wrong? Fears about big companies are legitimate. I just fear what the FCC might do a lot more. It all seems fine now, but the benevolent regulators in charge now might be replaced by less-benevolent ones later.
• deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
• Selfcommit 12y ago
  I suspect the conversations in this thread will be extremely interesting 5 years from now - should this regulation come to pass.
• jkn 12y ago
  Pretty impressed with the negativity here. Just a year ago, I remember all the stories on HN with people lamenting that the FCC doesn't have the guts to regulate broadband as a utility under title II [1,2,3] (admittedly with a minority speaking against title II, most prominently rayiner, whose comments I generally look forward to for an interesting contrarian view). Y Combinator even published an open letter[4]. Quoting: Title II of the Communications Act seems the most appropriate way to properly define broadband ISPs to be offering telecommunications. Speaking on behalf of Y Combinator, I’m urging you to adopt such a rule. And here we are. It seems to me that the community has always been complaining about the different FCC approaches on the subject, and in favor of title II, until the FCC yielded. Politicians must think the tech community is a frustrating beast to work with. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7750036 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7750036 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7057634 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7057634 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7637147 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7637147 [4] http://blog.ycombinator.com/y-combinator-has-filed-an-official-comment-with-the-fcc http://blog.ycombinator.com/y-combinator-has-filed-an-offici...
  • marcosdumay 12y ago
    Look at it this way: People that want FCC to classify ISPs as a utility got what they want, and are pretty secure that things won't change, so they stopped making noise. People that don't want it didn't got what they want, and are at the last moments they can do something before it's definitive, so they are making a LOT of noise.
    • d23 12y ago
      Hmm, that's an interesting way of looking at it. What I fear is more accurate though is there's a certain subset of people who equate complaining and criticizing with critical thinking. These people are less concerned with what ultimately happens, so much as they are concerned with how they can signal their discontent. They are the pedants at the party, picking apart conversations until everyone around them slowly moves to other parts of the room.
  • jarin 12y ago
• droopybuns 12y ago
  Netflix traffic and some hypothetical future tech like Surgery-over-IP traffic should not be prioritized equally.
  • jarin 12y ago
    This is kind of a red herring. 1) Surgery-over-IP would be designed within the limitations of the existing infrastructure, which is more than capable of handling high resolution real-time video. 2) Surgery-over-IP would be useful mostly in areas that are unlikely to have reliable high speed internet access (poor countries, battlefields, etc.). 3) Netflix traffic is streamed to the customer using a strategy that tries to minimize the number of hops it has to take (i.e. content delivery network). This reduces congested links for something that would be a point-to-point application like remote surgery.
    • droopybuns 12y ago
      Really, Red Herring? It is not distracting, and in fact is not intended to be distracting. I argue that it is certainly uncomfortable for most technologists. We are still at the very beginning of the Internet. With all the connected devices that are coming online, the nature of network traffic at a macro level is going to change. We really don't know where it's going to be tomorrow. All of the pro-net-neutrality arguments seem to ultimately boil down to a desire to avoid a "buffering" toast on any video. The practical reality is that the baby gets thrown out with the bathwater. Because "BUFFERING" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKcjQPVwfDk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKcjQPVwfDk
  • bequanna 12y ago
    Yes they should. Usually, I don't like making the 'slippery slope' argument, but it is quite appropriate here. The dangers are real. We can allow nothing less than forcing IPSs to maintain complete neutrality on traffic type. In your scenario, an ISP will determine that an organization is using their internet connection for this high-priority operation. The ISP then realizes that they can essentially extort the surgeon/hospital. This is a mafia-like protection scam. "Don't want to pay up? Gee, it sure would be terrible if that internet connection of yours was to drop out at the wrong time." Don't think this scenario is possible? I would argue it is probable.
• zkhalique 12y ago
  The real solution to all this is more competition. Stop the states from suing cities to prevent them from implementing municipal fiber. Open up the field to companies like Google to come in and partner with cities who can provide the last mile, competing with businesses. Even libertarians should say, "well, a city is a large organization and a giant corporation is a large organization, and both are kind of monopolies at this point..."
• joshontheweb 12y ago
  Will any of this matter once the global satellite internet networks come into being. SpaceX and o3b are aggressively working on these it seems.
• wsloth514 12y ago
  Is anyone else here afraid of this little word called, "regulate"? Maybe I am being naive.
  • shmerl 12y ago
    One should be afraid of the word unregulated, as in monopoly.
    • ancap 12y ago
      "unregulated" does not mean monopoly. In fact, in all cases, monopolies are only possible through government force (ie. regulation).
      • shmerl 12y ago
        > "unregulated" does not mean monopoly. No, but when unregulated happens to be a monopoly, you have a major major problem. Exactly what happens in many areas with big ISPs. It's not like there is no antitrust law, but no one seems to care about it and monopolists simply get away with ignoring it left and right.
    • paulhauggis 12y ago
      There is no monopoly over Internet. In my area, I have multiple choices for high-speed Internet.
      • shmerl 12y ago
        It depends on the area. In many places it's exactly a monopoly. And even if there is "choice" there is collusion between those options (for example to keep prices evenly high and not offering better service) which virtually makes it a monopoly anyway from the user's perspective.
• mdev 12y ago
  "Today, 55 percent of online traffic happens on smartphones and tablets, according to the F.C.C.." I did not know this, it's surprising for me. Mobile-first approaches makes a lot more sense now.
• cplease 12y ago
  The HN title is wrong and misleading. The NYT headline is "In Net Neutrality Push, F.C.C. Is Expected to Propose Regulating Internet Service as a Utility". That's a little different than "FCC regulating the Internet." ISPs provide internet endpoints to consumers. They should be utilities.
• paulhauggis 12y ago
  How is complete government regulation equivalent to a "free and open Internet"? Everyone seems to think that this will just be exactly what we have now, but with more freedom and options. I don't think this will be the case. It will open the door for any future governments to start regulating things like freedom of speech.
  • paulhauggis 12y ago
    Why the Down votes? Open and honest communities don't seem very open and honest anymore when they just down vote anything they disagree with. I guess I should just continue with the "all government regulation is good" HN circle-jerk to not get down voted.
• vandeaq 12y ago
  The net becomes a utility (and ISPs utility providers), and every breach, exploit, or unprotected private data leak becomes a terrorist action at prosecutorial discretion. Something to think about.
• bpodgursky 12y ago
  Probably way too late to get noticed here, but while I think the THREAT of Title II might be useful to keep ISPs in line, it would be a pretty rash move to actually reclassify broadband. The US has painfully little competition in most areas, there is no debate about that. But new technology has been fixing that, albeit slowly, via increasingly expansive and competitive 4G, Satellite, and even improvements in moving data across copper wires or existing phone lines (not going to get you 100mb service, but quite plausibly "good enough" that you can realistically threaten Comcast with quitting service.) I don't want to get in a libertarian vs flame war, but the fact is, it is far easier to regulate than deregulate when it becomes unnecessary. If the non-competitive market we have now is an artifact of old technology and installation costs, it would be a mistake to set up a regulatory infastructure we won't be able to roll back.
• dmfdmf 12y ago
  I am concerned about the implications for free speech. And I don't mean the freedom to say whatever I want as long as the FCC approves or that I don't piss off a large enough political constituency. If I start a blog to post pictures of Alah am I going to be shut down? What about forums that discuss illegal drug use? How long till the FBI, DEA, etc. petition the FCC to shut these sites down? What about sites like reddit that carry porn, post pictures of Alah AND discuss illegal drug use? I don't care about these sites but I do care about their right to run these forums and the participants right to discuss any issue openly, even socially unacceptable ideas. Free speech is a political principle but people pay lip service to it because they don't understand it and how important it is to a free society. If FCC starts to regulate speech on the internet (i.e. actual censorship which only the government can practice) by defining acceptable content and shutting down websites for so-called "hate speech", requiring a government "blog" license, etc. then it is game over for our freedoms and the future of the country.
  • warfangle 12y ago
    Huh? Which part of the telecommunications act gives the FCC that power, that has not been struck down by the courts?
    • dmfdmf 12y ago
      You can't see past your nose I guess.
• sparklepoof 12y ago
  Contrarians... gotta love em. They keep the running Looney Tunes reverse-psychology joke going. Counter-cultures are no different than the trend-following cultures they try to polarize themselves from. I guess I shouldn't have been shocked into commenting on this one for the oddly negative responses from some, but I do believe that the formulation of that negativity demands some more research. Has the internet created a society full of contrarian trolls bent on using sheer will to overcomplicate simple subjects?