Obama speaks out in favor of Net Neutrality; Ted Cruz likens it to "Obamacare"

Ted Cruz is an idiot who makes everyone dumber.

That said, Obamas plan for title II regulation of the internet is idiotic too.

 

This is good too (excerpt).

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...-to-save-the-internet-could-actually-ruin-it/

The Washington Post
Why Obama’s plan to save the Internet could actually ruin it

What consumers don’t realize is that the public drama has little if anything to do with net neutrality. At the heart of the campaign to undermine Wheeler’s May proposal is a long-running battle to transform the Internet into a public utility, an ill-advised effort that goes back as far as 1999.

At the dawn of the broadband era, the same advocates today predicting imminent doom and gloom for “the Internet as we know it” warned the Clinton FCC that without public utility treatment for broadband, start-ups would be unable to access potential customers, destroying the potential of the emerging commercial Internet.

In 1999, of course, one of those start-ups was a new company called Google, which today is worth over $370 billion. And under the light touch regulatory approach mandated by Congress and sensibly followed by Republic and Democratic FCC Chairman until now, ISPs have invested over a trillion in new infrastructure, building the world’s leading cable, mobile, and now fiber networks.

Despite all evidence to the contrary, however, the advocates continue to call for government takeover of the network, subjecting it to the same slow, inefficient and often corrupt rules that have nearly destroyed existing power, water, transportation and other older utilities. (In California last month, the president of the state’s public utility commission was forced to resign amid allegations of a too-comfortable relationship with a state power company whose poor maintenance and lax oversight by the regulator led to a gas explosion that killed eight people in 2010.)

 

Can anybody verify what I'm about to post? As far as I'm aware of net neutrality, the arguments for more regulation is that

- it ensures internet providers can't discriminate against the type of content you download, and the regulation is there to ensure that someone using Netflix won't have their speeds cut like others.

Am I missing anything else here? I see some articles about how this will stifle the innovative nature of the internet. But nowehre do I see any regulation of Silicon Valley, or of Google or Apple? I thought the regulation is aimed at those owning the cables and wires of the Internet, not the people who develop ingenius software. IF anything, if this regulation isn't passed, then won't only cash-rich companies will be able to afford the faster lnes, threby limiting small entrants from using those lanes?

Articles also point at the crap state of American infrastructure, and if the Internet is regulated like a utility then it will become similar? Would that be true?

I do want to know more about this subject, happy to hear what others think.

 

Whoever these "democrats" are, they use a lot of right-wing talking points.

Verizon v. FCC essentially confirmed that the FCC had no teeth to enforce anything on ISPs because they didn't have title II. If they can regulate pay-for-priority between tier 2 and tier 3, that does not at all guarantee net neutrality. The last mile providers can still throttle and block data to consumers.

Right wing talking point number one: there's competition! Except there isn't. Let the market solve it! Except there's no market.

Oh DUDE. If Title II can be used as a trojan horse to introduce unbundling like we had before 96, then I'm more in favor of Title II than ever before. Seriously, if we can get back to unbundling, then we can at last start to get competitive service.

HUGE ****ING ROLLEYES RIGHT HERE. Oh god. It has been well-established for years now that the United States has fallen behind pretty much the rest of the damn developed world in internet speed/price. I'll soon re-up my contract in Germany for 100megabit internet for 30 euros a month. How y'all doing in the states, price-wise?

More claims of bipartisanship sprinkled with two handfuls of right-wing buzzwords and talking points. Investment! Job creation! Here's the real story: Protect the nations' largest media/ISP conglomorates from competing! It's Unamerican!

What a crap talking point. Battling with providers is hard, therefore the FCC shouldn't do it. Furthermore, FCC has never pursued any prescription of Title II in the last 15 years or more, and still may not now! The whole point of Verizon defeating the FCC in court was because the FCC didn't want to go as far as using title II. WTF? And LOL for the "broadband deployment in underserved areas", the last thing those chumps want to do is pull wire out into rural areas.

 

Nolen, I agree with most of your points, but I have another question that I'm unsure about and that you may know.

Under Title II, what would be the incentive to improve infrastructure (going fiber for example)? Why would Comcast, ATT or whoever improve their infrastructure when their pipes are open to all to use?

If no incentive, how can infrastructure be improved? Who pay for it?

The government dictate improvement? The tax payer pay for it?

 

Excellent post, thanks for this.

 

So right now, the two options are no regulation or regulation. Between the two, I choose regulation.

If people are actually actually afraid of the potential for abuse of the particular way the president is going about it, they should turn the debate into "my safer, more limited regulatory framework vs yours".

Come up with something that satisfies the advocates' concerns, without potential for the abuse that you say is looming right behind the curtain.

Until then, I'm assuming all the "slippery slope" arguments are just fear mongering bull**** obfuscation, to muddy the waters and scare people away from any regulation at all, and all this hidden agenda talk is as illusory as the FEMA concentration camps the same people were talking about four years ago. I know the "secret agenda" stuff plays well with the base, but it's a tired retread for everybody else who saw that the first 30 attempts at world domination that we were warned about disappeared like a puff of smoke.

It's pretty clear at this point that the Netflix/ISP kerfuffle it a sign of things to come, and service providers and content providers have no problem screwing the consumer in order to play power games with each other. This is what is intolerable to me. Come up with a better, non-hypothetical way to fix this, and I'm on board.

 

"the "slippery slope" arguments are just fear mongering bull**** obfuscation" is coming from both sides as per lusual. The problem with the anti crowd is they are just using this issue so they can disagree with Obama more.

 

That's a very good question and I defer to Space Ghost, who is or has worked in the internet provider business. He can answer this better than I can.

But to attempt to clarify, there's a difference between Net Neutrality and "unbundling."

Net Neutrality means all zeros and ones traveling to you must be treated equally by your internet provider. A provider operating under NN can't give preference to data from some sites and services, or block/slow down data from others. Whatever you want to see is what you get, at whatever speed you're paying for.

Unbundling is a regulation that was enforced on phone companies back in the days before wireless. Under this system there is one infrastructure of copper wires going through cities to our houses, and the owner of this infrastructure has to sell access to other providers. So back in the early 90s, Bell South may have owned all the copper phone wires and connections in a particular city, but other companies could 'buy in' and provide service to customers. This way we had numerous competitors providing services to customers over the same network, and we allow market forces to provide good service at low prices.

Ideally, everybody would provide their own infrastructure and we would see capitalism at work, as various private entities compete to lay the best networks of wires and delivery systems. Unfortunately, in the finite space of a city there's no way this can reasonably work. Every single new competitor in the market would have to rip up every street in the city.

The same goes for electricity. In Texas, I believe electric service is de-regulated, but that just means it operates under different regulations. There's one infrastructure of delivering electricity to everyone through the various wires in the city, but numerous electricity providers can compete to reach you through those wires. I apologize if I'm telling you stuff you already know.

As far as I know Net Neutrality does not mean unbundling. So, the first answer to your question is that with NN in place, infrastructure ownership stays the same, and whatever incentive they have to improve the network stays the same. In this case, not much, because once a company is comfortably in a monopoly or duopoly, you can lead from behind and just improve things a little when people get pissed enough.

However, I just read somewhere else that Title II could possibly be used to lead to unbundling, which I think would be frikkin awesome. However, the motivation for a private owner to improve infrastructure has to decrease because they're forced to share it.

This is the downside of a utility whose infrastructure has to be pulled at great expense and trouble through a city. You can't pull it multiple times, so you can only have one owner of that infrastructure. Most countries in the rest of the world either have government ownership, or private ownership but sharing is enforced; we also had similar enforced sharing on phones before 1996. Now we just have one owner like Comcast, charging as much as possible for middling service and daring the customer to leave for a slower DSL "competitor."

 

Huh? That's not it at all. The question is extreme Title II regulation or sensible laws.

 

I cant stress enough that the "blame" doesn't lie with one group and its not just about fiber, coax or copper lines. ISP's are upgrading their backhauls from coax and copper to fiber. This is why we have seen a decent jump in the last 5 years or so. The cost of fiber has dramatically dropped. I live and work in an area that does not have cable. People out here would LOVE to have comcast or charter but are stuck on DSL. There is truly no competition, outside of satellite internet and cellular/wireless. In the last 18 months, the DSL provider has started upgrading their networks using fiber backhauls. The DSL service has increased substantially, from a barely usable connection to a fairly stable connection which allows the consumer to actually use their bandwidth to full capacity (their speeds).

Our fiber parters networks have their limitations too. When it was first built out years ago, cost effective equipment was used. They currently can't offer a TV package because the hardware used can't handle the load. It would require a massive upgrade through the entire network. The core network can handle over a terraflop. The sad reality is that at peak, only a very small fraction of the network is used. What is even worse, as you drive down the main roads, you see endless fiber strung up on telephone poles. This isn't my story, this is all over the country.
In my region, we have a power company that provide all the power. In the central city areas, they provide the power, but outside of it, they resell to other electric CO-OPs who maintain their own infrastructure. The CO-OP is rolling fiber out, but is hindered by the main power provider and are struggling to roll it out as they are not allowed to freely use the parent power providers infrastructure.
There is one CO-OP that is the exception, as they provide their own power and infrastructure for the entire county. The county, the cities, the CO-OP all work together and the fiber take rate is 10x higher than all the surrounding counties....and this is located up in the mountains. The lack of competition and self serving groups allowed this to happen.

Once you enter into the bigger cities, there is more at play. The internet providers fight with each other to prevent the others from growing. The cities and counties are more interested in working back room deals than providing a better solution for everyone ... and we want them to regulate us? Careful for what you ask for.

Take a look at Chattanooga, TN. They gave everyone the finger and decided to roll out their network, regardless of the pressure they received from ISP's and constituents worrying about the city spending too much money.
Provo, UT and Kansas City tried to provide their own fiber, but failed ... so they simply handed over the keys to Google.

Every area has their own unique issues. Outside of a complete gov takeover, I do not see a huge improvement in the next decade. The good news is that local municipalities are really taking this issue serious. We work with several municipalities who have simply given us access to any of their facilities just to bring in an alternative to the crappy DSL.

 

There is an old saying, if it aint broke, dont fix it.

Again, as others stated, NN does NOT deal with competition. It only prevents ISP's from favoring certain traffic. Until this is an actual threat and not just a boogy man in the closet, lets not screw with it.

If Title II could bring forth better internet, then I would be all for it. But I have not seen a single proposal on how this would be done.

To quote one of the best lines of the decade:

 

1 word: Netflix

It's already proven it's broke. The moment you start leveraging your customer's quality of service as a negotiating tactic, you've gone over the line.

When two elephants fight, they couldn't care less about the ants underfoot. The government's role is to make sure the ants aren't ignored.

 

I must have missed the press conference where Ted Cruz details the finer points of his alternative plan. Maybe you can give me a recap?

 

Well, thankfully it's not up to Cruz to decide what our options are.

"Broadband providers have made clear they would not challenge net neutrality rules based on the FCC’s Section 706 authority, so long as the rules made some effort to accommodate arrangements with edge providers that led to new and improved services. That compromise would be consistent with the desire expressed by the American electorate to find the middle ground and reject extreme intervention in the U.S. economy."

 

Heard a guy on brought on Michael berry show tonight to explain net neutrality. He told listeners that this was a made up problem of the left, that there are no cases of an ISp changing speed for content and entering into private deals and that there has never been an interest in doing so expressed by the ISPs.

 

Dear God.

 

Good thjng we all know that people. Especially Fox News shills can say any damn thing they want say even if it isn't true.

And Nero if you read this I have 200 megs in Austin for $60 a month.

 

Yeah that's what happens when Google comes to town. Too bad it's not like that for 99% of country. I'm paying $80 for 50Mbs, which was 12Mbs like a 1-2 years ago. The sad thing is DOCSIS 3.0 upgrade was a very small cost on the backend. Comcast was forced into it to compete with UVerse on the TV side of things.

I was under the impression that the tax payers already paid for some of it.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/2...r-to-get-tax-breaks-then-never-delivers.shtml

There's also the Universal Service Fund that prompted up the original phone lines to begin with.

I feel like there's two arguments going on. Title II from what I understand could force ISPs to allow competing services over their lines. However the context in which the President wanted to use Title II for was to enforce network neutrality.

Personally I think both are needed, because the lack of competition is true cause of all of this. As shown constantly, once there's competition in the market, internet speeds go up while prices go down.

 

I agree. We wouldn't need to talk about NN if there are real competition. Title II seems to be the only proposal that can lead to a solution to the competition problem, though that's not what Obama intended (or at least he said so).