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FCC Vote Marks Effort To Take Greater Control of the Web
GovTechGuy writes "The FCC voted today to open an inquiry into how the broadband industry is regulated, the first step in a controversial attempt to assert greater regulatory control over Internet service providers. In a 3-2 vote the Democratic members of the Commission voted to move forward with the FCC's proposal to reclassify broadband as a telecom service, increasing the regulation it is subject to. The move also has large implications for net neutrality, which FCC Commissioner Julius Genachowski has made a focus under his watch."
With the FCC being smacked down with regards to "lol you can't regulate us" the first step has been done to regulate the industry, not because of some wild-eyed's bureaucrat's fantasy, but because it needs to be done.
The days of the mom-and-pop ISP are over and done with. The lack of regulation let these thrive, but the large telecoms and cable companies have gobbled up every single one of these since the dot-bomb. They are gone, never to be seen again.
Now everyone is left with either a local monopoly or at best a duopoly of broadband providers, who are increasingly out to screw the customer, like Comcast has been shown to do. Comcast wanted to play hardball. Well, here it is, guys, the big-time. Don't say we didn't warn you.
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BMO
But but... that means the government has a monopoly on pulling cable!
Seriously I agree with you, but the typical pro-business free-market thinker will tell you that you are a big-government liberal who wants to take over or put out of business the local cable and telephone companies by assuming government ownership of last-mile fiber.
Instead we should let each and every company with a few billion dollars to spend come along and tear up every street to lay their own fiber. (And no, we can't pull another line in the same conduit. Either the company that owns the conduit shouldn't be forced to host their competition, or the conduit itself is a government monopoly that must be abolished!)
Were I a land developer, and if the local government didn't force me to let the local cable and telcos run lines to every house in my new subdivision, I'd tell them both to GTFO, pull my own fibers from each new house to my own CO (fibers owned and managed by the HOA or each homeowner), and then encourage any and every company wanting to service my neighborhood to run a trunk to my CO.
Someone would do it - heck I bet Google would do it - and then the local cable and telephone companies would scramble to do it, too.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
Funny, considering how much /.'s like guns, explosives, and the bill of rights, you'd think /.'s were right wing.
Well, except for actually liking logic, technology, science.
Can we start using a different political axis?