5 ms·

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 c

by 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.
- fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
  >We like the Internet as it is today Who likes the way things are? I'd like it a lot better if it was more like in Japan, Korea, Latvia, Hungary, Finland, Sweden, France, ...etc.
  - adventured 12y ago
    Serious question - how do the median consumer bandwidth speeds in the US compare to France?
    - fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
      According to [this](http://dailyinfographic.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/the-beauty-of-infographics.jpeg http://dailyinfographic.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/the-b...) France is faster by a large margin.
    - dkhenry 12y ago
      Thats a seriously loaded question. The problem is the US is a really big place so in city's and their metro areas you get world class speeds ( 150Mbs is pretty common ) however in rural areas your stuck with maybe DSL and if not that then you can get satellite internet. Thats the problem I see with classifying ISP's as a common carrier. Your not going to get 150Mbs everywhere your going to get 10 which means in the urban area's where you do have good access and some competition you will see stagnation ( forget 1Gbps in cities that are well above the average )
dublinben 12y ago
>monopolies are given out to the existing players Why would you think this? >a crappy connection forever Or this? Just last week, the FCC raised its definition of broadband, against the complaints of incumbent ISPs.
- mattmcknight 12y ago
  This is how it works for electric power.
briandear 12y ago
That's exactly right. A utility implies a commodity item. Take the electric business for example, you might compete on price, but quality is never part of the equation. There isn't a "better" electricity. It's all the same. A phone line is a phone line. You can't pay more for a better quality phone line -- it facilitates phone calls. There aren't "faster" phone lines -- a phone call is a phone call. Obviously I am talking land lines here. Same with water. There aren't any water companies competing based on the fact that they provide Evian on tap. Even if you wanted to pay the price to have Evian on tap, it will never happen; water is water in terms of a utility. Making the Internet a utility will destroy competition because it commoditizes it. I know that some percentage of the HN community seems to love government regulation and feels that capitalism is somehow evil, but te government has a long track record of being highly inefficient and mostly immune to market forces. If you don't like the drivers license office service, too bad, it's the only game in town; there's no incentive to improve it. I find it ironic that despite the Libertarian leanings of many of us here, there's some desire to implement more regulation, more restrictions and less competition. How does less competition improve anything? Without incentives, the market-driven pressure to make it faster and cheaper disappears. I think there's a fundamental misunderstanding of the consequences of regulating the Internet and presumably taxing it like a utility. There are significant unintended consequences.
- digikata 12y ago
  It's not that capitalism is evil, it's that you have to make observations about some markets where capitalism is naturally working or failing. The current state of broadband doesn't have any competition to destroy with regulation... last-mile internet should fall under a utility because it's already been tested in the market and there simply hasn't been any demonstration of competition because there is no direct financial incentive on the open market to overbuild on the last mile and compete.
- alchemism 12y ago
  The free market is a nice fantasy. Most Americans live in a place with one (1) choice for broadband Internet. How can competition be reduced from that as the starting point?
wmeredith 12y ago
>> a water utility where the product has little variance. Now why, exactly, do you think that is?

by dkhenry 12y ago

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.
fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
>We like the Internet as it is today Who likes the way things are? I'd like it a lot better if it was more like in Japan, Korea, Latvia, Hungary, Finland, Sweden, France, ...etc.
- adventured 12y ago
  Serious question - how do the median consumer bandwidth speeds in the US compare to France?
  - fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
    According to [this](http://dailyinfographic.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/the-beauty-of-infographics.jpeg http://dailyinfographic.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/the-b...) France is faster by a large margin.
  - dkhenry 12y ago
    Thats a seriously loaded question. The problem is the US is a really big place so in city's and their metro areas you get world class speeds ( 150Mbs is pretty common ) however in rural areas your stuck with maybe DSL and if not that then you can get satellite internet. Thats the problem I see with classifying ISP's as a common carrier. Your not going to get 150Mbs everywhere your going to get 10 which means in the urban area's where you do have good access and some competition you will see stagnation ( forget 1Gbps in cities that are well above the average )

dublinben 12y ago

>monopolies are given out to the existing players Why would you think this? >a crappy connection forever Or this? Just last week, the FCC raised its definition of broadband, against the complaints of incumbent ISPs.

mattmcknight 12y ago
This is how it works for electric power.

briandear 12y ago

That's exactly right. A utility implies a commodity item. Take the electric business for example, you might compete on price, but quality is never part of the equation. There isn't a "better" electricity. It's all the same. A phone line is a phone line. You can't pay more for a better quality phone line -- it facilitates phone calls. There aren't "faster" phone lines -- a phone call is a phone call. Obviously I am talking land lines here. Same with water. There aren't any water companies competing based on the fact that they provide Evian on tap. Even if you wanted to pay the price to have Evian on tap, it will never happen; water is water in terms of a utility. Making the Internet a utility will destroy competition because it commoditizes it. I know that some percentage of the HN community seems to love government regulation and feels that capitalism is somehow evil, but te government has a long track record of being highly inefficient and mostly immune to market forces. If you don't like the drivers license office service, too bad, it's the only game in town; there's no incentive to improve it. I find it ironic that despite the Libertarian leanings of many of us here, there's some desire to implement more regulation, more restrictions and less competition. How does less competition improve anything? Without incentives, the market-driven pressure to make it faster and cheaper disappears. I think there's a fundamental misunderstanding of the consequences of regulating the Internet and presumably taxing it like a utility. There are significant unintended consequences.

digikata 12y ago
It's not that capitalism is evil, it's that you have to make observations about some markets where capitalism is naturally working or failing. The current state of broadband doesn't have any competition to destroy with regulation... last-mile internet should fall under a utility because it's already been tested in the market and there simply hasn't been any demonstration of competition because there is no direct financial incentive on the open market to overbuild on the last mile and compete.
alchemism 12y ago
The free market is a nice fantasy. Most Americans live in a place with one (1) choice for broadband Internet. How can competition be reduced from that as the starting point?

wmeredith 12y ago

>> a water utility where the product has little variance. Now why, exactly, do you think that is?