FCC Favors Net Neutrality

dkatana writes: Yesterday, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said net neutrality is high on the agency's agenda, and a set of rules will be proposed beginning of next month. He also talked about reclassification of internet providers such as Google Fiber as Title II Telecom Companies. If Google and other fiber providers are given pole access, it could be the beginning of a race to deploy fiber-to-the-home to many cities and towns, where the cost of digging trenches has deterred many initiatives and protected the monopolies of the entrenched telecom providers. Advocates for net neutrality believe that Title II classification would allow the FCC to protect Internet services by regulating against paid prioritization. A related article suggests one side effect of the internet becoming a public utility will be higher costs for internet access.

Comments

Seriously? GOOD NEWS?

[MisterSquid]

Today is not 1 April!

Hard to believe what I'm reading here. I was starting to grow cynical.

Anyhow, just wanted to post to say this appears to be a good thing. Very, very exciting.

Re:Seriously? GOOD NEWS?

[beakerMeep]

It's all PR talk until they actually do anything about it.

Re:Seriously? GOOD NEWS?

[clovis]

Be careful what you ask for.

Most /.ers probably are not old enough to remember the days when all telecommunications were regulated under title II. Let's just say that costs were higher, innovation was essentially prohibited, and service was even worse than you can get from Comcast today.

"So, the next time you complain about your phone service, why don't you try using two Dixie cups with a string? We don't care. We don't have to. We're the Phone Company."

I'm old enough to remember. My families phone number was two letters and 5 digits, and I was a small child when the first direct-dial long distance call was made. I had relatives that were still on party lines.

You are correct in that phone service was expensive compared to today. Long distance calls back then cost far more per hour than almost anyone's hourly pay. However local land-line service was cheap and included in-home service for phones and wiring. Some people went for decades between outages. The primary cause was someone knocking down a pole and breaking the wires.

But today's lower costs are almost entirely due to technological advances and not to de-regularization.

When de-regularization happened, home phone rates went up as telco businesses sprang to to cherry-pick businesses to serve.
(home phone rates in the regulated days were subsidized by higher rates charged to businesses, much like electric rates are set)

However, the good thing about de-regularization was that those new telco businesses now competed on the basis of features, and business phone service competition drove innovation. After that, then home service rates went down (that is, down in inflation adjusted dollars)

But look at the things invented during the regulated phase by Bell Labs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B... in the 50's, 60's 70's That is a list of eveyrthing. transisters, lasers, MOSFET, molecular beam epitaxy, Ritchie and Kernigan worked at Bell Labs.


As for "service was even worse than you can get from Comcast today", I do not think that is correct.
My only service requests (and my parents) had been establishing new service when moving, and it was always excellent.
My experience with Comcast (and my neighbors) was shockingly bad. Bad as in refusing to take service requests, bad as in not showing up at all for service requests that had been accepted.and worst of all bad as in having service failures at all.
I have never met anyone whose experience was the opposite of mine regarding telco vs Comcast service, or even modern AT&T vs old AT&T. Service was one thing they did right in the old days..

"A related article suggests..."

[QuietLagoon]

The authors of that related article are not against Title II for ISPs per se, but, imo, are against the government doing anything to help consumers.

.
The authors of that related article: "Grover G. Norquist is president of Americans for Tax Reform. Patrick Gleason is the organization’s director of state affairs."

Internet as a public utility = higher cost?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm - really? Anyone recall the POTS Long Distance war??? Sure drove down pricing there, same thing will happen with Internet providers.

Re:Internet as a public utility = higher cost?

[Lunix Nutcase]

Nor are prices when you have next to no competition such as the current situation with ISPs in most markets.

This is a good thing....

[bleh-of-the-huns]

And as it relates to any topic, a person writing a story or an article can always find a slant one way or another to meet their own political views or agendas.

As far as new taxes, have you looked at your bill recently.. all those lovely below the line fee's disguised as taxes of some sort, or regulatory recovery fees, you know things that should be included in the price because they are the cost of doing business, but instead are disguised as creative taxes and fees which are not mandated by any gov (state local or federal) entity, just so the company can keep it's base advertized price the same and claim they are not raising prices.

Under regulation, this would hopefully go away. Also, the feds have said they do not have to apply all of the Title II regulations (and they specifically call out the tax portions) to ISPs.

Re:The future and its enemies

[dkatana]

Google is the one asking for it. It makes sense to reduce their cost of deploying fiber. In Europe Internet access is heavily regulated but FTTH is everywhere and much cheaper than in the US.