We know that ISPs lobby the government to protect themselves from having to compete, because competing means providing a better product at a lower price, hurting their profits. But why are fiscal conservatives always ready to fight to the death to protect the nation's largest companies from competing? Perhaps in in the case of some politicians it is a cynical maneuver, done merely to protect the bottom line of their paymasters. But I think they are a small minority. Are you truly in favor of market forces if you are against competition? If you are more against regulation than you are for competition, then how much of a capitalist are you, really? Where have all the capitalists gone? All ISPs should be declared a utility and regulated as common carriers. Instead of finding creative ways to double-dip and screw customers over, they should be forced to compete on quality of service and price.
The chairman of the FCC is also a former lobbyist for cable companies. This whole thing is a big joke.
The great irony is that the Internet's regulated set-up has been what allowed competition to encourage. If everything had been set-up like ISPs are seeking since day one, you'd be using the Road Runner search bar instead of Google and Comcast's video player instead of YouTube. The fact that companies like Google, Facebook, YouTube, etc. were allowed to start off in dorms and apartments without fear of having their potential user base throttled before being worth billions speaks to the truly free market set-up of the Internet. Consumers arguing against net neutrality seem to be telling the dungeon master that the straps aren't tight enough.
Any agency or representative who disagrees should have their internet cut off for a month. You don't need internet just like you don't need indoor plumbing. You can go outside and get water from a well, drink bottled water only, and poop in the woods.
Well, goodbye interwebs. It's been fun, but you're changing, and I don't know if you will really be my type any more. It's not me, it's you. Sure we can still be friends, but I'm not sure I can trust you to be honest, open and fair any longer. It looks like you just aren't going to be the same ever again. I weep for you. For what we were. For what we could have been.
Then you know very little about how ISP's are ran. You have no idea of the true cost of keeping and maintaining a last mile internet provider. You have no idea of the cost it takes to roll out. I will agree there are gross inefficiencies in all ISP's. However, if you think mandating an ISP as a utility is going to fix all the problems, you are very wrong. The price of internet will go up dramatically. Companies who are trying to start up local fiber initiatives will collapse. Do you really think google will stick around for this?
Let's be clear about the choices. 1) Customers of large ISPs who also consume low-traffic, low-revenue internet sites. 2) Customers of large ISPs who also consume high-traffic, high-revenue internet sites. 3) Executives and shareholders of large ISPs. 4) Producers of low-traffic, low-revenue internet sites. 5) Producers of high-traffic, high-revenue internet sites. All voters, taxpayers and economic actors.
How can they collapse when they can't even start to begin with? http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/02/isp-lobby-has-already-won-limits-on-public-broadband-in-20-states/ ISP lobby has already won limits on public broadband in 20 states. It's no secret that private Internet service providers hate when cities and towns decide to enter the telecommunications business themselves. But with private ISPs facing little competition and offering slow speeds for high prices, municipalities occasionally get fed up and decide to build their own broadband networks. To prevent this assault on their lucrative revenue streams, ISPs have teamed up with friends in state legislatures to pass laws that make it more difficult or impossible for cities and towns to offer broadband service. Attorney James Baller of the Baller Herbst Law Group has been fighting attempts to restrict municipal broadband projects for years. He's catalogued restrictions placed upon public Internet service in 20 states, and that number could be much higher already if not for the efforts of consumer advocates. Sad states of affairs Alabama: Municipal communications services must be self-sustaining, "thus impairing bundling and other common industry marketing practices." Municipalities cannot use "local taxes or other funds to pay for the start-up expenses that any capital-intensive project must pay until the project is constructed and revenues become sufficient to cover ongoing expenses and debt service." Arkansas: Only municipalities that operate electric utilities may provide communications services, but they aren't allowed to provide "basic local exchange service," i.e. traditional phone service. California: Public entities are generally allowed to provide communications services, but "Community Service Districts" may not if any private entity is willing to do so. Colorado: Municipalities must hold a referendum before providing cable, telecommunications, or broadband service, unless the community is unserved. Florida: Imposes special tax on municipal telecommunications service and a profitability requirement that makes it difficult to approve capital-intensive communications projects. Louisiana: Municipalities must hold referendums before providing service and "impute to themselves various costs that a private provider might pay if it were providing comparable services." Michigan: Municipalities must seek bids before providing telecom services and can move forward only if they receive fewer than three qualified bids. Minnesota: 65 percent of voters must approve before municipalities can offer local exchange services or operate facilities that support communications services. Missouri: Cities and towns can't sell telecom services or lease telecom facilities to private providers "except for services used for internal purposes; services for educational, emergency, and health care uses; and 'Internet-type' services." Nebraska: Public broadband services are generally prohibited except when provided by power utilities. However, "public power utilities are permanently prohibited from providing such services on a retail basis, and they can sell or lease dark fiber on a wholesale basis only under severely limited conditions." Nevada: Municipalities with at least 25,000 residents and counties with at least 50,000 residents may not provide telecommunications services. North Carolina: "Numerous" requirements make it impractical to provide public communications services. "For example, public entities must comply with unspecified legal requirements, impute phantom costs into their rates, conduct a referendum before providing service, forego popular financing mechanisms, refrain from using typical industry pricing mechanisms, and make their commercially sensitive information available to their incumbent competitors." Pennsylvania: Municipalities cannot sell broadband services if a "local telephone company" already provides broadband, even if the local telephone company charges outrageously high prices or offers poor quality service. South Carolina: The state "requires governmental providers to comply with all legal requirements that would apply to private service providers, to impute phantom costs into their prices, including funds contributed to stimulus projects, taxes that unspecified private entities would incur, and other unspecified costs." Tennessee: Municipalities that own electric utilities may provide telecom services "upon complying with various public disclosure, hearing, voting, and other requirements that a private provider would not have to meet. Municipalities that do not operate electric utilities can provide services only in 'historically unserved areas,' and only through joint ventures with the private sector." Texas: The state "prohibits municipalities and municipal electric utilities from offering telecommunications services to the public either directly or indirectly through a private telecommunications provider." Utah: Various procedural and accounting requirements imposed on municipalities would be "impossible for any provider of retail services to meet, whether public or private." Municipal providers that offer services at wholesale rather than retail are exempt from some of the requirements, "but experience has shown that a forced wholesale-only model is extremely difficult, or in some cases, impossible to make successful." Virginia: Municipal electric utilities can offer phone and Internet services "provided that they do not subsidize services, that they impute private-sector costs into their rates, that they do not charge rates lower than the incumbents, and that [they] comply with numerous procedural, financing, reporting and other requirements that do not apply to the private sector." Other requirements make it nearly impossible for municipalities to offer cable service, except in Bristol, which was grandfathered. Washington: The state "authorizes some municipalities to provide communications services but prohibits public utility districts from providing communications services directly to customers." Wisconsin: Cities and towns must "conduct a feasibility study and hold a public hearing prior to providing telecom, cable, or Internet services." Additionally, the state "prohibits 'subsidization' of most cable and telecom services and prescribes minimum prices for telecommunications services."
Yes to some degree, but not like what you think. In this case, the FCC in the early 2000s thought that government getting out of the way and allow free-market competition would be what's best. They thought that technological advances in wireless would enable wireless companies to compete against cable for internet services. They were completely wrong. Leaving it to the market to compete have failed miserably here. As a result, 14 years later, we are way behind other countries for high-speed internet access, prices and capacity. Now, another stone is about to be set to further increase monopoly power of these cable companies.
the core problem is people who have an ideological bent against using tools available due to an irrational fear of policy sniping exclusively about legislative bodies while ignoring the underlying substance of the debate itself---something that in this case underpins the open and free nature of the Internet, and the innovation that has created "more jobs" (yay Rand speak time) then, say, Wall Street has destroyed.
They spent billions. They make trillions. They can do this because there isn't competition. And with the billions that they have spent, when compare to other countries, we get slow expensive internet. They are pocking the money, increasing costs while services and speed hasn't keep up with demand. An example - Korean and Sweden both provide gigabit service at about $25 a month. That's 100x faster than the faster internet service here in the US at a fraction of the price.
I saw a thing about Europe and apparently cable is like a utility in countries there. One guy interviewed had a choice of about 8 different providers at faster speeds than we get and far better pricing than we get. Frustrating. If Americans only knew how the rest of the world does things they'd know how big a shaft they're getting.
Your argument loses credibility when you compare the United States to S Korea and Sweden. Move on past the yahoo articles and delve into the real issue. If rolling out fiber was this easy, then yes, we could provide gigabit speeds. (Here is your South Korea utopia)
This is a very good article and really expands into the real issues we have in our country. Our company works closely with one of the last few remaining startup fiber initiatives that took grant money from the 2009 BTOP. (note: Google is cherry picking the failed inititives). Here in Georgia, the incumbent ISP's are trying very hard to prevent municipalities from becoming ISPs. We are highly encouraging municipalities to pass charters to become ISPs before this becomes a law. I do agree with the incumbent ISP's; It does play a huge disadvantage to them. However, these incumbent ISP's are doing nothing...and they can't because its too costly. I have mixed feelings on whether municipalities should be allowed to compete. For the immediate term, its good, but eventually it will lead to the same problem we have now. Another dirty little secret DSL providers know that really prevents growth and innovation; The typical customer prioritizes their internet in the following order: Cost, then reliability, then speed. As long as DSL providers offer basement speeds for 24.99, they will continue to b**** and whine before paying $10-$20 more for better service. Reliability is what convinces customers to pay more, not speed.
I don't think it will fix all problems. It will fix some present problems and prevent some major, major problems down the line. ISPs are making money hand over fist. Regulating them under Title II merely prevents them from making extra money by setting up arbitrary barriers to the wealthier web services. Could you explain how Title II will make local fiber initiatives collapse?
Someone posts that Korea and Sweden provide gigabit internet at $25 a month, and your response is some photos of messy wires. Since according to you we don't know anything, please enlighten us how Title II regulation will ruin everything.
This isn't clear, could you please clarify? Did you mean the incumbents are at a disadvantage, or local initiatives? The incumbent ISPs are doing nothing (you mean nothing to expand capability?) because it's too expensive? If municipalities are allowed to compete, what problem will that create?
