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If you develop a successful business plan selling pineapples- and then a regulator comes in and says that assumptions x, y, & z are no longer legal- why would a

If you develop a successful business plan selling pineapples- and then a regulator comes in and says that assumptions x, y, & z are no longer legal- why would a business owner decide not to "waste money" on courts? Is it not obvious that the best reason to do so is that you've made investments based on a set of assumptions that have a longer horizon than the next 6 months? The courts exist to provide relief in the case of a conflict. Without them, the only conflict solution is violence. If a company has invested billions in network upgrades and has a regulator come in and upset the apple cart- it's either cheaper to accept it or it's disastrous. I know the appeal of hyperbole, but apply occam's razor. Why would they 'waste money' on the courts? Swapping copper for fiber requires expensive trench digging. Planning upgrades costs billions. Monopoly is a word which you are misusing. Verizon is the leading wireless ISP in the country. Comcast is the leading wireline ISP in the country. Centurylink is a dominant force in ISP delivery.

shmerl 12y ago
> If you develop a successful business plan selling pineapples- and then a regulator comes in and says that assumptions x, y, & z are no longer legal- why would a business owner decide not to "waste money" on courts? Now change pineapples to air and consider a colony on some remote asteroid. Do you get the idea better? > Monopoly is a word which you are misusing. Verizon is the leading wireless ISP in the country. Comcast is the leading wireline ISP in the country. Centurylink is a dominant force in ISP delivery. It's not misused. Monopoly is clearly present in areas where there is no choice between all those options you listed (for example for landline Internet). Only few places have multiple choices. And even then they are often colluded - i.e agree with each other not to compete in order to prevent lowering prices and spending money on improving the service. So those cases for users are essentially a monopoly anyway, even if formally they have "choices".
- droopybuns 12y ago
  >>So those cases for users are essentially a monopoly anyway, even if formally they have "choices". This- I get. You made assertions without qualifications. I don't know where AT&T is the dominant ISP vs Comcast vs Centurylink. My point is not to be acerbic. It's to say that ISP service delivery is EXPENSIVE. You have to make major investments. Those investments are based on assumptions. If a regulator comes in and unwinds those assumptions, OF COURSE YOU ARE GOING TO SUE. No rational business owner would do otherwise. The better option would be to incentivize competition, but nobody wants to address how expensive space on telephone poles is. So now we're going to kill the golden goose so everyone can get their netflix & youtube videos.
  - shmerl 12y ago
    Investments are working just fine with Title II as practice shows. And if assumption of the investors is monopoly, they deserve to lose big deal. It's their own fault. > The better option would be to incentivize competition Here I agree fully, but how exactly would you do that without causing ire of the same monopolists who hate competition? For example you could force unbundling, i.e. require to give access to the network to competitors. Some countries do that (France I think) and quite successfully. But do you think AT&T and Co. will like that? They'll start screaming ten times as much as they do now because of Title II.
    - droopybuns 12y ago
      >>But do you think AT&T and Co. will like that? No, I don't, but I'm not an AT&T apologist. It's networking I care about. >>but how exactly would you do that without causing ire of the same monopolists who hate competition? Fuck the carriers who are fighting against competition. My concern is that in 2030, we're going to live with regulations that were established in 2015. Do you remember what the Internet was like in 2000? Do any of the rules that would have made sense then apply now? IoT, M2X, etc. are changing how everything works. I don't want a bandwidth hogging technology like video to overwhelm innovation in machine learning based m2x spaces. I want video to work- but I also don't think we're done innovating.
      - nitrogen 12y ago
        Do any of the rules that would have made sense then apply now? Yeah. Rule 0: deliver the packets. Optional: reorder packets according to customer QoS, but never without customer request.
        maxlybbert 12y ago
        Doesn't net neutrality make it impossible for the customer to pay extra for QoS? Or have I been following the debate with incorrect definitions?
shmerl 12y ago
Anyway, in case of AT&T they easily invested in their mobile networks, while telephony there is covered by Title II. Where were their investment fears? Title II won't affect any investments - all those arguments are bunk. What it will affect is making ripping everyone off with anticompetitive techniques harder.
- rayiner 12y ago
  The statute is written in a way where forbearance from almost all the actual provisions of Title II is written into Title II for wireless carriers. For wireline, Forebearance is at best at the FCC's discretion, and at worst possibly an abuse of the FCC's discretion that'll be overturned in court. Thus, with wireline the carriers face the threat of full-blown Title II which they don't with wireless.
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    > The statute is written in a way where forbearance from almost all the actual provisions of Title II is written into Title II for wireless carriers. Where? The only thing I can see in the statute that might touch on different treatment regarding wireless carriers actually limits the degree of forbearance that can be applied to "commercial mobile services" in ways that do not apply to other common carriers. compare 47 USC Sec. 332(c)(1) with 47 USC Sec. 160.
    - rayiner 12y ago
      But 332(c)(2) makes clear that the FCC can apply Title II provisions only to the services that interconnect with the PSTN: http://scholarship.law.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1068&context=commlaw http://scholarship.law.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1068&... (explaining the distinction between commercial mobile service in 332(c)(1) and private mobile service in 332(c)(2)); see also Cello P'ship v. FCC, 700 F.3d 534, 538 (D.C. Cir. 2012) ("In particular, section 332 specifies that providers of "commercial mobile services," such as wireless voice-telephone service, are common carriers, whereas providers of other mobile services are exempt from common carrier status. See id. § 332(d)(3), (c)(2).") Even leaving aside the issue of whether Congress intended to create a voice/data dichotomy: at a purely a technical level, voice and data networks are segregated. LTE only supports packet-switched IP, and unless you're using VoLTE, voice runs over the circuit-switched GSM network.

shmerl 12y ago

> If you develop a successful business plan selling pineapples- and then a regulator comes in and says that assumptions x, y, & z are no longer legal- why would a business owner decide not to "waste money" on courts? Now change pineapples to air and consider a colony on some remote asteroid. Do you get the idea better? > Monopoly is a word which you are misusing. Verizon is the leading wireless ISP in the country. Comcast is the leading wireline ISP in the country. Centurylink is a dominant force in ISP delivery. It's not misused. Monopoly is clearly present in areas where there is no choice between all those options you listed (for example for landline Internet). Only few places have multiple choices. And even then they are often colluded - i.e agree with each other not to compete in order to prevent lowering prices and spending money on improving the service. So those cases for users are essentially a monopoly anyway, even if formally they have "choices".

droopybuns 12y ago
>>So those cases for users are essentially a monopoly anyway, even if formally they have "choices". This- I get. You made assertions without qualifications. I don't know where AT&T is the dominant ISP vs Comcast vs Centurylink. My point is not to be acerbic. It's to say that ISP service delivery is EXPENSIVE. You have to make major investments. Those investments are based on assumptions. If a regulator comes in and unwinds those assumptions, OF COURSE YOU ARE GOING TO SUE. No rational business owner would do otherwise. The better option would be to incentivize competition, but nobody wants to address how expensive space on telephone poles is. So now we're going to kill the golden goose so everyone can get their netflix & youtube videos.
- shmerl 12y ago
  Investments are working just fine with Title II as practice shows. And if assumption of the investors is monopoly, they deserve to lose big deal. It's their own fault. > The better option would be to incentivize competition Here I agree fully, but how exactly would you do that without causing ire of the same monopolists who hate competition? For example you could force unbundling, i.e. require to give access to the network to competitors. Some countries do that (France I think) and quite successfully. But do you think AT&T and Co. will like that? They'll start screaming ten times as much as they do now because of Title II.
  - droopybuns 12y ago
    >>But do you think AT&T and Co. will like that? No, I don't, but I'm not an AT&T apologist. It's networking I care about. >>but how exactly would you do that without causing ire of the same monopolists who hate competition? Fuck the carriers who are fighting against competition. My concern is that in 2030, we're going to live with regulations that were established in 2015. Do you remember what the Internet was like in 2000? Do any of the rules that would have made sense then apply now? IoT, M2X, etc. are changing how everything works. I don't want a bandwidth hogging technology like video to overwhelm innovation in machine learning based m2x spaces. I want video to work- but I also don't think we're done innovating.
    - nitrogen 12y ago
      Do any of the rules that would have made sense then apply now? Yeah. Rule 0: deliver the packets. Optional: reorder packets according to customer QoS, but never without customer request.
      - maxlybbert 12y ago
        Doesn't net neutrality make it impossible for the customer to pay extra for QoS? Or have I been following the debate with incorrect definitions?

shmerl 12y ago

Anyway, in case of AT&T they easily invested in their mobile networks, while telephony there is covered by Title II. Where were their investment fears? Title II won't affect any investments - all those arguments are bunk. What it will affect is making ripping everyone off with anticompetitive techniques harder.

rayiner 12y ago
The statute is written in a way where forbearance from almost all the actual provisions of Title II is written into Title II for wireless carriers. For wireline, Forebearance is at best at the FCC's discretion, and at worst possibly an abuse of the FCC's discretion that'll be overturned in court. Thus, with wireline the carriers face the threat of full-blown Title II which they don't with wireless.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > The statute is written in a way where forbearance from almost all the actual provisions of Title II is written into Title II for wireless carriers. Where? The only thing I can see in the statute that might touch on different treatment regarding wireless carriers actually limits the degree of forbearance that can be applied to "commercial mobile services" in ways that do not apply to other common carriers. compare 47 USC Sec. 332(c)(1) with 47 USC Sec. 160.
  - rayiner 12y ago
    But 332(c)(2) makes clear that the FCC can apply Title II provisions only to the services that interconnect with the PSTN: http://scholarship.law.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1068&context=commlaw http://scholarship.law.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1068&... (explaining the distinction between commercial mobile service in 332(c)(1) and private mobile service in 332(c)(2)); see also Cello P'ship v. FCC, 700 F.3d 534, 538 (D.C. Cir. 2012) ("In particular, section 332 specifies that providers of "commercial mobile services," such as wireless voice-telephone service, are common carriers, whereas providers of other mobile services are exempt from common carrier status. See id. § 332(d)(3), (c)(2).") Even leaving aside the issue of whether Congress intended to create a voice/data dichotomy: at a purely a technical level, voice and data networks are segregated. LTE only supports packet-switched IP, and unless you're using VoLTE, voice runs over the circuit-switched GSM network.