Slashdot Mirror
Major ISPs Threaten To Throttle Innovation and Slow Network Upgrades
An anonymous reader writes "In a letter released on Tuesday and addressed to the FCC chairman, a group of the U.S.'s top ISPs have warned that if the FCC re-classifies the internet as telecommunications, then innovation would slow or halt and network upgrades would be unaffordable. 'Under Title II, new service offerings, options, and features would be delayed or altogether foregone. Consumers would face less choice, and a less adaptive and responsive Internet. An era of differentiation, innovation, and experimentation would be replaced with a series of 'Government may I?' requests from American entrepreneurs.' They add, 'even the potential threat of Title II had an investment-chilling effect by erasing approximately 10% of some ISPs' market cap.' Ars Technica highlights earlier doomsday predictions by AT&T. The FCC is scheduled to vote May 15 on the chairman's recent proposal encompassing this reclassification option that the ISPs vehemently oppose."
Reader Bob9113 adds that a protest is planned for the same day by those who oppose the FCC's plans.
Sounds like a serious threat. Better cave.
They weren't going to upgrade anything to begin with. Their strategy has so far been imposing limits and charging more. ISPs were never planning to innovate or upgrade.
where the new sheriff holds a gun to his own head and threatens to pull the trigger in order to get everyone to back off. I think it will work this time too as the FCC et al do their usual backing off party trick.
Consumers would face less choice,
How would that even be possible? We only have 4 main providers in the U.S. Are these folks saying that if they were reclassified they would start merging with one another?
One can only hope they go through with this threat because the government would be able to step in and regulate them as a monopoly, forcing them apart like they did with AT&T and for a few years we'd once again have multiple ISPs to choose from.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Careful there, son. If they don't get what they want, customers will have less choice than the one monopoly provider charging several times what international customers in equivalent markets pay that some of those customers can choose from at present.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I have exactly one choice in my area, and many places in the US are the same. Many more only have two choices, with few having more than that. It's difficult to imagine having less choice than this.
And upgrades? I don't know what they did with all that money they received, but they certainly never upgraded a thing.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
If these companies can not handle regulation, then others will step in.
While people often talk about 'free markets' and 'regulations' like they are opposites, they really are not on the same scale. If a company can not adjust to regulation, then it probably can not adjust to shifts in market demand, supply chain changes, or price fluctuations.
If these big ISPs can not adapt, then they will die.
Internet STARTED OUT as a "common carrier" service, which is how we were able to buy DSL service from a CLEC instead of the ILEC. Common carrier status was done away with about the time Verizon took a billion dollars from the taxpayer and started rolling out Fios.
I used to buy DSL from a CLEC in Philadelphia that rode on top of Verizon's copper. When Fios rolled out, I remember discussing with the CLEC that they would not be able to serve me because Fios was not considered a common carrier, and Verizon did not have to sell capacity on its lines at a cut rate to competitive carriers.
That CLEC exited consumer broadband shortly thereafter.
Reclassifying modern broadband as a common carrier is absolutely going to create more competition and more choice for consumers. Yes, it will mean a tiny bit less profit for the majors, because they will have to sell capacity to CLECs again at a discount, but whatever.
Honestly, and I'm hardly ever one to talk about nationalization, but the taxpayer has paid for almost all of the Internet infrastructure that has been laid out since about 2004. It should belong to them and be used for their benefit. If Verizon et al want to be considered media providers and not common carriers, then let them pay the taxpayer for access to the network that the taxpayers paid for. Yes, I know, socialism. So what? A lot of what we do is socialized, because it's better for everyone that way.
Maybe it is time for internet to be treated more like electricity as a "REGULATED UTILITY". That statement should scare the daylights out of ISPs. Sorry but you can only make a 20% profit and yes we will audit the daylights out of you and by the way, you owning media companies is a conflict of interest and you must sell them all off.
The problem is the same one as the RIAA, MPAA, and Coal. All three have the Democrats in their back pockets because of the mostly liberal "artists" or in the case of coal the unions and they have the Republicans in the other pocket because of corporations and stock prices or in the case of coal you can throw in jobs in Republican areas.
What is funny is that nobody likes the cable companies but they politically get their way.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
even the potential threat of Title II had an investment-chilling effect by erasing approximately 10% of some ISPs' market cap
Translation: Our investors know we stand to profit greatly from being able to control the flow of internet traffic in accordance with our company's best interest.
Maybe it's time for antitrust regulation to be used against ISPs that have used predatory business practices to eliminate competition from smaller ISPs in their regions in order to maintain monopolies over the areas they service?
Well, they have a point. I mean, they are pretty innovative. Just 10 years ago, I had exactly two options for home broadband. Today, with all that amazing innovation and competition, I have exactly one option for home broadband.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
If that is the case then we will invalidate all those local laws you have somehow gotten enacted to stop competition in local areas.
you know the ones that say it is illegal for the local government to give Comcast competition?
The ones that strangle startups at birth keeping your defacto monopoly.
How about a bit or 'real world' economics to sharpen your game then?
See how you like that then?
I'd rather be riding my '63 Triumph T120.
Remember MCI? Yes, tell us all about how much less competition we'll have when you're forced to compete on service instead of in disservice. Blow it out your interconnect. We've already been down this road. ISP definition of "competition" is how much more they can over charge for shit than their competitors without actually delivering service. Thus the throttling unless the endpoints pay even more for the shit they already paid for.
ISPs are quadruple dipping: The website pays for access, the end user pays for access, OK, but then they charge extra for non-NATted IPs (hello, IPv6 exists) and unblocked ports ("business" class), and now they want to sell the websites "faster" access to the customers when we both already paid for that speed of access to each other, AND they want to put caps on the number of bits downloaded -- Hint: That's not how it works. They have to have the hardware to handle peak load, it doesn't matter if I suck in tons of gigs during off-peak time, caps are not about congestion, they're just yet another way to monetize. Not to mention "bursting" plans where they allow the first n-bytes of a download to come in fast, then throttle the shit out of it. "Up To X MB/s, (minimum 0 BAUD, yes Zero)", WTF. Damn, that's more that quadruple, but I lost count of how many dippings that is.
Visit OpenCongress and locate your congress critters via zipcode. Politely call each of them and say, "I want the FCC to classify broadband Internet services providers as common carriers", and have them repeat it (a real person will answer, and they'll have written down your words). I also mention that it should be considered illegal anti-competitive business practices for municipalities to granted ISPs monopolies, and that breaking up said monopolies will allow new competition to flourish. You can leave a comment on Issue #14-28 via the FCC Comment Filing System. Contact the FCC by Email: openinternet@fcc.gov, or call the FCC comissioners (but remember they're not beholden to voters). The most effective thing to do is write a letter to the editor mentioning your congressman's name and the net neutrality issue and send it to your local news outlet, that really gets their goat -- they care about the newspaper for some odd reason, maybe because old folks read it? Here's a petition, but these don't do shit, really it's just the illusion of shit-doing.
P.S. Here's a vid explaining the net neutrality issue. Here's another more sarcastic and long winded vid on the subject. and here's a video from an actual honest ISP. (NSFW, for brutally honest language).
Protip: Use a download accelerator to open multiple connections to the same file and trick the ISP into allowing you a faster speed. When the D/L starts getting throttled (hover to view the speed graph), pause it then unpause it and the speed goes back up (new connections = new "bursting" counter).
There is no competition now! That's the whole problem. My choices are slow but steady DSL, fast but unreliable cable, or slow AND unreliable dish network. The cable companies and the phone companies have zilch incentive to upgrade their lines to better support their Internet-only customers, since their primary phone and television customers are happy and don't realize what awful Internet service we're getting compared to all the other developed countries on the planet. If I want better service where I live, I have to pay several thousand dollars to the cable folks to run business class fiber to my house, for which I'll pay several hundred dollars a month... and the service will STILL cut out every hour, based on what I saw of the business service when I did third party tech support in town. The DSL company won't even consider giving us the business class package since we're not in a commercially developed area.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
Oh, I think 99% of everyone would agree that it is way past time, but where are you going to find a Federal DA willing to indict, who wouldn't also be immediately fired? Well, in reality, in today's day and age, he'd be framed for child porn or proved to be an islamo-mole and buried in gitmo.
"Unheard of means only it's undreamed of yet,
Impossible means not yet done." ~~ Julia Ecklar
I’m going to open a big can of worms here, and I’ll admit up front that I haven’t fully thought it through. This more of a US-centric stream-of-consciousness kind of mind-dump.
I’ve lately come to hate the US telco industry with the angry passion of a thousand fiery suns. They enjoy a monopoly or near-monopoly in most areas of the United States. They also have a legal responsibility to maximize value to their shareholders. In the absence of competition, maximizing service and quality to their customers runs counter to maximizing that shareholder value. Our natural instinct is to shout the mantra of “increase competition!”, but even in the areas where there is competition, we see very little competitive behavior.
Why is that? Collusion? Well...maybe it’s because the Comcast CEO doesn’t have to pick up the phone and discretely call the AT&T CEO to find out what he’ll do if Comcast decides to lower rates and provide better service. He already knows it will start a price and service war that while benefiting the consumer, will hurt corporate profits. Nobody at this echelon wants to race to the bottom. All the big players have to do is find a happy medium of market share and slowly increase profits. The barriers to entry to be competitive/disruptive are enormous. It takes a Google to do it. Even if you could do it, you’d be forced to join the club and be a part of the same problem for the same reason the incumbant companies do.
But telecom isn’t the only industry that operates in this manner, even when competitors are present. The average prices in automobiles, new homes, health care, etc. have all outpaced increases in wage at a rate of roughly 2-to-1 over the last 45 years. The increases should be in line with wage increases to guarantee sustainability. These are competitive markets, so why the disparity? The reasons are many and varied. There are some easily justified increases like safety, R&D, and environmental concerns; but there are also offsets like increases in efficiency, automation, logistics and transport, overseas labor, etc. More often than not, these companies report quarterly and annual profits that measure in the billions and frankly defy belief. Which brings me to that can of worms.
There was a time when companies were reluctant to sell stock. They were literally selling a piece of their company to the public, and only did it because they needed the capital to bring new products and technologies to market. People bought stocks because they believed in that company, product, or technology; and handed over their money to help bring it to market and maybe make a little money in the process. Now, stocks are strictly investment vehicles for the buyer, and the seller often uses the capital to force stagnation instead of innovation. Look at Facebook. They are a titan in the tech industry, lighting cigars with $100 bills. Why the IPO? What new major advances in social media did the IPO make possible that they couldn’t make happen themselves? Likely none. But what it did do is allow Facebook to make some acquisitions. They are staying on top by removing the competition not rising to meet it.
Maximize shareholder value. That phrase is used to justify: higher prices, lower service, lower quality parts, environmental damage, damage to the long-term future of our nation, and general unethical corporate behavior (skimming, fleecing, shell corporations, tax loophole exploits). I’m not opposed to making money as a shareholder. But that money isn’t made out of thin air, and it doesn’t come from the seller. It comes from the American public. We pay that. When you get your dividend check or sell your stocks for a fat profit, that money came from me, from your neighbors, from your family and friends, from anyone that ever bought a product or service from that company. You paid for it too.
Similar to the underlying storyline in the movie The Matrix, I’m of the ever-increasing opinion tha
I'm sorry, but your opinion seems to be wrong.
Don't forget the provisions -- that the telcos heavily lobbied for -- in the last major telecommunications act that made it legal for them to lock out all those smaller ISPs.
IMNSHO, the anti-trust actions should have started the day the first Baby Bell was being purchased to begin the reconstitution of Ma Bell. It's time to break up AT&T again.
And kudos to whoever it was who suggested that they (and the cable companies) need to divest themselves of any content creation companies they now own. Owning the pipe and the content seems like creation of a vertical monopoly to me. I don't need or want the ISP's "content". I'm struggling to think of any content that AT&T could provide to me that I would find valuable. In fact, I really don't want to deal with an internet service provider but, rather, an internet connection provider. That's what I have now through one of the companies that's managed to survive on the crumbs left over after AT&T started pricing access to their copper to the point that it killed off the little guys. It works fine although its tough to describe my connection as "broadband".
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M