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Unfortunately the Net Neutrality 'debate' was another lose-lose situation for the United States. What we wanted wasn't for the big telecom duopoly to be forced

Unfortunately the Net Neutrality 'debate' was another lose-lose situation for the United States. What we wanted wasn't for the big telecom duopoly to be forced to either run their business as a tiered service or as a regulated utility. What we wanted was for the US Government to exercise its Anti-Trust capabilities and bust the universally hated Comcast and Time Warner into a bunch of small companies, and set "Goldilocks" regulation so that it's easy for small and new ISPs to compete on both price and service. Additional laws preventing corporations from discriminating by content, protocol, or customer may also have been nice, but would have been that extra nice something. Are Comcast and Time Warner going to be somehow less shitty now? Are they going to monitor our communications less? Are they going to provide better prices and better customer service? Are they going to cease fraudulently charging customers? No. Of the two options the FCC chose the better one. But it's America's fatal flaw that all problems have two political solutions, neither of which address real issues or people's needs.

duaneb 12y ago
It's not the job of the government to make companies less shitty, it's their job to protect the free market so OTHER companies can reduce the shittiness of e.g. comcast. This is just the first step. I'd also like to point out that splitting up Ma Bell hardly solved the problem.
- BinaryIdiot 12y ago
  > It's not the job of the government to make companies less shitty, it's their job to protect the free market so OTHER companies can reduce the shittiness of e.g. comcast. While you're correct you also need to remember that it was the government who helped create many of these monopolies in the first place. Trying to force the market to become more open for smaller companies arguably could have been the best move to make. But that doesn't really matter now.
- rsync 12y ago
  "I'd also like to point out that splitting up Ma Bell hardly solved the problem." Really ? I'm not an expert, but one item that comes to mind is that my children have never heard the term "long distance" and never will. That's pretty swell.
  - spacemanmatt 12y ago
    I'd like to argue that splitting up Bell succeeded so utterly that it's time to break up some of the modern incarnations of the Baby Bells.
  - duaneb 12y ago
    Ma Bell's children went on to do the exact same thing with cable and broadband.
    - verbin217 12y ago
      So... it sounds like we need to do the exact same thing again. But you're advocating the opposite. Why?
      - spiralpolitik 12y ago
        Separate infrastructure and service. Require companies to sell access to the infrastructure a wholesale price to anybody who wants in. This way it allows for new entrants to the market who can find different ways of packaging the wholesale price at lower cost to the consumer without requiring them to build infrastructure. (The service part of the infrastructure company pays the same wholesale price as everybody else so that there are no advantages to owning both) This is the model that a lot of European countries with post privatization telecoms monopolies went with and has worked surprisingly well and has kept prices low.
        zanny 12y ago
        Or if you are building infrastructure on taxpayer dollar keep it public like they keep almost everything else. Depends on location, but usually power lines are public but maintained by a private contracted company, roads are public but are maintained either by subcontracted engineering corps or state public unionized engineers, sewer lines are public, etc. It seem we only think that twisted pair / coaxial / fiber channels should cross everyones private property but stay privately owned. On average at least. I know a lot of backwards thinking that leads to the privatization of other infrastructure (water, power, etc) that leads to tremendous exploitation of the citizenry by the monopoly provider.
- leejoramo 12y ago
  The split up of Ma Bell was a huge part of the story of the history of computer communications. Remember, AT&T owned the whole system, including the wires in you home or office and the actual phones. Prior to the breakup, you had to be granted permission to connect any equipment to the phone system. One of the primary reasons people used Acoustic Coupled modems was so that Ma Bell did not have to get involved in the approval and installation of your equipment. I well remember installing my first modem with an RJ11 jack in the early 1980's. As a 14 year old, I remember feeling quite the rebel for not getting AT&T's approval.
  - EvanAnderson 12y ago
    Actually, the Carterfone decision (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carterfone#Landmark_regulatory_decision http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carterfone#Landmark_regulatory_...) allowed attachment of lawful devices to the AT&T network.
  - woofyman 12y ago
    I remember renting my phone from AT&T. Premium colors and touchtone were extra. They would periodically ring your line to measure the voltage drop to detect unauthorized phones.
    - stox 12y ago
      And that is why you would disconnect the Bell on all the "extra" phones. ;)
      - 72deluxe 12y ago
        Fascinating and informative! Thanks! I had no idea it was this bad, as I am from the UK.
        vidarh 12y ago
        It was almost that bad in pretty much all European countries too. Including the UK. Prior to the start of deregulation in 1981 you could only rent your phone from BT, and BT/the Post Office had sole authority to decide what could be attached to the network. Starting from 1981, standardized sockets were introduced to allow people to buy and attach third party equipment, and BSI took over the responsibility for setting the standards for what equipment could be attached. (And you can still rent your phone from BT if you prefer: http://bt.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/13012/~/is-it-possible-to-rent-phones-from-bt%3F http://bt.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/13012/~/is-it... )
- nickbauman 12y ago
  "the free market" is like saying "the world peace". your ideological slip is showing.
covzzire 12y ago
Why couldn't we just get congress to pass a law stating that ISP's cannot throttle one type of content in favor of another? Why this heavy handed approach?
- orthecreedence 12y ago
  You mean Title X? The vaguely-worded proposal, hand-written by the telecoms, to castrate the FCC's ability to regulate, and to impose a set of exploitable loopholes that are difficult to reverse once in effect? After seeing the absolute ignorance congress has of the internet, how it works, who uses it, how it benefits the country/world, and why it's important, the last thing I want is those people voting on new internet regulations. I'd rather have an organization regulating the internet that has been set up precisely to understand the issues. Yes, it's removed from direct voting influence, but at least the people there understand what the internet is and are willing to listen to people who know what they're talking about.
  - zbyte64 12y ago
    *direct money influence
grecy 12y ago
There are two problems, and the FCC has solved one of them perfectly. Problem 1: ISPs trying to charge to (de)prioritize packets. Problem 2: The two biggest ISPs suck, and should be broken up, and/or it should be mandated that competition is much easier. Would you be happy if they solved problem 2 without solving problem 1? Leave problem 2 for another day, and celebrate that problem 1 has been dealt with.
- bduerst 12y ago
  Totally agree. We can harp on the FCC for their performance with a wide range of issues, but at least here we have them [finally] taking action on one of them.
- chaostheory 12y ago
  Wouldn't drastically increased competition solve problem one over time?
  - codyb 12y ago
    Possibly but it hinges a lot on drastically increased in an often prohibitively expensive commercial sector and it would take a lot longer than enforcing one, and then encouraging competition to bring speeds up and overall cost of bandwidth down for consumers. And there's been lots of no compete agreements among these ISPs and I'm sure there's other examples out there where the "competition" makes it better for all of them at the expense of consumers.
    - chaostheory 12y ago
      well there was one attempt by Clinton to have the gov fund increased capacity... and the telecoms just ended up taking the money without doing anything http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070810_002683.html http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070810_0026... I believe the Obama admin tried it again. I don't know the full result, but I wouldn't be surprised if the same thing happened.
  - bduerst 12y ago
chrischen 12y ago
How does busting them into smaller companies help anything? You'd still have regional monopolies or duopolies.
martin1975 12y ago
Go away please.
moskie 12y ago
But breaking up Comcast or TW wouldn't lead to increased competition and more options for consumers. Breaking them up would not change the fact that most people will only have one serious option for wired internet service... it would simply change the name of the one option that a given consumer would have. The reason being that, for a given location, the permission to actually lay down the lines is going to be given typically to one company (or a select few). This means that wired internet service is not capable of being a healthy competitive market. Which leads to the conclusion that treating those lines as a utility is the right choice.
- hhw 12y ago
  At the very least, they wouldn't have the overwhelming advantage when negotiating peering terms with content and carrier networks. Eyeball (broadband) networks currently have far too much power, and is the reason why they make huge profits while pretty much every primarily carrier network loses money. The cost of Internet connectivity is dependent on the cost of cable in the ground, and the cost of equipment. For both, carrier networks have to make larger (and thus riskier) capital outlays and pay a premium to operate at a larger scale. Meanwhile, the broadband networks received billions of public funds on the condition they'd ensure access in rural areas and provide a minimum level of service, both of which they haven't done yet kept the money.
abalone 12y ago
Even if the giants were broken up you'd still have the problem of local monopolies. To actually enable competition within the same market you'd probably need to go the route of a regulated utility that is required to lease their cable lines to independent ISPs, as we've done with phone companies. Only then could the market even conceivably let consumers choose between tiered and neutral services. Even then it wouldn't necessarily be good in the long run, because consumers will prefer the cheaper (tiered) service, not "realizing" the long-term effect that would have on inhibiting startups and competition among internet services.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
O____________O 12y ago
What we wanted wasn't for the big telecom duopoly to be forced to either run their business as a tiered service or as a regulated utility. That's exactly what I wanted. It will lead to more consumer-facing competition. What we wanted was ... exercise its Anti-Trust capabilities and bust the universally hated ... into a bunch of small companies That's not at all what I wanted. It would lead to endless localized land-grabbing bureaucracy.

duaneb 12y ago

It's not the job of the government to make companies less shitty, it's their job to protect the free market so OTHER companies can reduce the shittiness of e.g. comcast. This is just the first step. I'd also like to point out that splitting up Ma Bell hardly solved the problem.

BinaryIdiot 12y ago
> It's not the job of the government to make companies less shitty, it's their job to protect the free market so OTHER companies can reduce the shittiness of e.g. comcast. While you're correct you also need to remember that it was the government who helped create many of these monopolies in the first place. Trying to force the market to become more open for smaller companies arguably could have been the best move to make. But that doesn't really matter now.
rsync 12y ago
"I'd also like to point out that splitting up Ma Bell hardly solved the problem." Really ? I'm not an expert, but one item that comes to mind is that my children have never heard the term "long distance" and never will. That's pretty swell.
- spacemanmatt 12y ago
  I'd like to argue that splitting up Bell succeeded so utterly that it's time to break up some of the modern incarnations of the Baby Bells.
- duaneb 12y ago
  Ma Bell's children went on to do the exact same thing with cable and broadband.
  - verbin217 12y ago
    So... it sounds like we need to do the exact same thing again. But you're advocating the opposite. Why?
    - spiralpolitik 12y ago
      Separate infrastructure and service. Require companies to sell access to the infrastructure a wholesale price to anybody who wants in. This way it allows for new entrants to the market who can find different ways of packaging the wholesale price at lower cost to the consumer without requiring them to build infrastructure. (The service part of the infrastructure company pays the same wholesale price as everybody else so that there are no advantages to owning both) This is the model that a lot of European countries with post privatization telecoms monopolies went with and has worked surprisingly well and has kept prices low.
      - zanny 12y ago
        Or if you are building infrastructure on taxpayer dollar keep it public like they keep almost everything else. Depends on location, but usually power lines are public but maintained by a private contracted company, roads are public but are maintained either by subcontracted engineering corps or state public unionized engineers, sewer lines are public, etc. It seem we only think that twisted pair / coaxial / fiber channels should cross everyones private property but stay privately owned. On average at least. I know a lot of backwards thinking that leads to the privatization of other infrastructure (water, power, etc) that leads to tremendous exploitation of the citizenry by the monopoly provider.
leejoramo 12y ago
The split up of Ma Bell was a huge part of the story of the history of computer communications. Remember, AT&T owned the whole system, including the wires in you home or office and the actual phones. Prior to the breakup, you had to be granted permission to connect any equipment to the phone system. One of the primary reasons people used Acoustic Coupled modems was so that Ma Bell did not have to get involved in the approval and installation of your equipment. I well remember installing my first modem with an RJ11 jack in the early 1980's. As a 14 year old, I remember feeling quite the rebel for not getting AT&T's approval.
- EvanAnderson 12y ago
  Actually, the Carterfone decision (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carterfone#Landmark_regulatory_decision http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carterfone#Landmark_regulatory_...) allowed attachment of lawful devices to the AT&T network.
- woofyman 12y ago
  I remember renting my phone from AT&T. Premium colors and touchtone were extra. They would periodically ring your line to measure the voltage drop to detect unauthorized phones.
  - stox 12y ago
    And that is why you would disconnect the Bell on all the "extra" phones. ;)
    - 72deluxe 12y ago
      Fascinating and informative! Thanks! I had no idea it was this bad, as I am from the UK.
      - vidarh 12y ago
        It was almost that bad in pretty much all European countries too. Including the UK. Prior to the start of deregulation in 1981 you could only rent your phone from BT, and BT/the Post Office had sole authority to decide what could be attached to the network. Starting from 1981, standardized sockets were introduced to allow people to buy and attach third party equipment, and BSI took over the responsibility for setting the standards for what equipment could be attached. (And you can still rent your phone from BT if you prefer: http://bt.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/13012/~/is-it-possible-to-rent-phones-from-bt%3F http://bt.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/13012/~/is-it... )
nickbauman 12y ago
"the free market" is like saying "the world peace". your ideological slip is showing.

covzzire 12y ago

Why couldn't we just get congress to pass a law stating that ISP's cannot throttle one type of content in favor of another? Why this heavy handed approach?

orthecreedence 12y ago
You mean Title X? The vaguely-worded proposal, hand-written by the telecoms, to castrate the FCC's ability to regulate, and to impose a set of exploitable loopholes that are difficult to reverse once in effect? After seeing the absolute ignorance congress has of the internet, how it works, who uses it, how it benefits the country/world, and why it's important, the last thing I want is those people voting on new internet regulations. I'd rather have an organization regulating the internet that has been set up precisely to understand the issues. Yes, it's removed from direct voting influence, but at least the people there understand what the internet is and are willing to listen to people who know what they're talking about.
- zbyte64 12y ago
  *direct money influence

grecy 12y ago

There are two problems, and the FCC has solved one of them perfectly. Problem 1: ISPs trying to charge to (de)prioritize packets. Problem 2: The two biggest ISPs suck, and should be broken up, and/or it should be mandated that competition is much easier. Would you be happy if they solved problem 2 without solving problem 1? Leave problem 2 for another day, and celebrate that problem 1 has been dealt with.

bduerst 12y ago
Totally agree. We can harp on the FCC for their performance with a wide range of issues, but at least here we have them [finally] taking action on one of them.
chaostheory 12y ago
Wouldn't drastically increased competition solve problem one over time?
- codyb 12y ago
  Possibly but it hinges a lot on drastically increased in an often prohibitively expensive commercial sector and it would take a lot longer than enforcing one, and then encouraging competition to bring speeds up and overall cost of bandwidth down for consumers. And there's been lots of no compete agreements among these ISPs and I'm sure there's other examples out there where the "competition" makes it better for all of them at the expense of consumers.
  - chaostheory 12y ago
    well there was one attempt by Clinton to have the gov fund increased capacity... and the telecoms just ended up taking the money without doing anything http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070810_002683.html http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070810_0026... I believe the Obama admin tried it again. I don't know the full result, but I wouldn't be surprised if the same thing happened.
- bduerst 12y ago

chrischen 12y ago

How does busting them into smaller companies help anything? You'd still have regional monopolies or duopolies.

martin1975 12y ago

Go away please.

moskie 12y ago

But breaking up Comcast or TW wouldn't lead to increased competition and more options for consumers. Breaking them up would not change the fact that most people will only have one serious option for wired internet service... it would simply change the name of the one option that a given consumer would have. The reason being that, for a given location, the permission to actually lay down the lines is going to be given typically to one company (or a select few). This means that wired internet service is not capable of being a healthy competitive market. Which leads to the conclusion that treating those lines as a utility is the right choice.

hhw 12y ago
At the very least, they wouldn't have the overwhelming advantage when negotiating peering terms with content and carrier networks. Eyeball (broadband) networks currently have far too much power, and is the reason why they make huge profits while pretty much every primarily carrier network loses money. The cost of Internet connectivity is dependent on the cost of cable in the ground, and the cost of equipment. For both, carrier networks have to make larger (and thus riskier) capital outlays and pay a premium to operate at a larger scale. Meanwhile, the broadband networks received billions of public funds on the condition they'd ensure access in rural areas and provide a minimum level of service, both of which they haven't done yet kept the money.

abalone 12y ago

Even if the giants were broken up you'd still have the problem of local monopolies. To actually enable competition within the same market you'd probably need to go the route of a regulated utility that is required to lease their cable lines to independent ISPs, as we've done with phone companies. Only then could the market even conceivably let consumers choose between tiered and neutral services. Even then it wouldn't necessarily be good in the long run, because consumers will prefer the cheaper (tiered) service, not "realizing" the long-term effect that would have on inhibiting startups and competition among internet services.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

O____________O 12y ago

What we wanted wasn't for the big telecom duopoly to be forced to either run their business as a tiered service or as a regulated utility. That's exactly what I wanted. It will lead to more consumer-facing competition. What we wanted was ... exercise its Anti-Trust capabilities and bust the universally hated ... into a bunch of small companies That's not at all what I wanted. It would lead to endless localized land-grabbing bureaucracy.