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AT&T To "Pause" Gigabit Internet Rollout Until Net Neutrality Is Settled
An anonymous reader writes AT&T says it will halt its investment on broadband Internet service expansion until the federal rules on open Internet are clarified. "We can't go out and just invest that kind of money, deploying fiber to 100 cities other than these two million [covered by the DirecTV deal], not knowing under what rules that investment will be governed," AT&T Chief Randall Stephenson said during an appearance at a Wells Fargo conference, according to a transcript provided by AT&T. "And so, we have to pause, and we have to just put a stop on those kind of investments that we're doing today."
hey maybe they can just return all the fucking money they took to provide broadband and never did all these years
This money.
And that money.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
I don't know maybe the 200 billion we gave in the 1996 Telecommunications Act.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
No, no one knows whats going on now legally speaking, that's why we're having this discussion. The Verizon vs FCC decision removed that certainty. They know what the regulatory regime might be, but they don't know what it is going to be. The FCC chair is looking at splitting the baby which doesn't really sound like a clear indicator of what he's going to do from a legal perspective. It appears that the FCC chair wants to allow ISPs to prioritize certain traffic for security and use (e.g. e-mail traffic doesn't need the kind of priority as streaming video) because not all traffic deserves the same level of attention from the ISP, but not do so for business reasons (e.g. Time Warner shouldn't be allowed to hobble Netflix streaming service). But at the same time, he appears to be distancing himself from Obama's plea for Title II. Writing this into law is more complex than simply saying what the FCC chair said he wanted: "What you want is what everyone wants: an open Internet that doesn’t affect your business."
Oh my. Title II classification worked quite well until 2002 when the FCC reclassified broadband providers as "Information Services" under Title I. Which was so obviously a great move, because we had so much less competition then. Not only that, the big broadband providers were so poor before that, they were going out of business. Thank goodness for that! Otherwise, the Internet would have failed completely and we'd all be using punched cards and telexes again by now. Not.
The last twelve years have seen increasing consolidation, local monopolies and duopolies, less competition, higher prices for basic consumer connectivity, more abusive Terms of Service for consumer connections, throttling of competitive content providers who threaten the media content distribution strangleholds that the big broadband providers have.
Title II reclassification isn't the whole of the answer, just a small part. But it's a start at least. Unfortunately, if you tell the same lies over and over again ("we're so poor that reclassification will stop us from upgrading our networks" and "Forcing us to be common carriers will destroy all innovation on the Internet") people start to believe it.
It's just a smokescreen for the big ISPs to keep protecting their abusive business model and maintain their huge profits in a non-competitive marketplace. These big ISPs are holding back innovation in last-mile technologies, despite being given USD$200 Billion in subsidies over the past 18 years to do otherwise.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
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