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FCC Approves Net Neutrality Rules
muggs sends word that the U.S. Federal Communications Commission has voted 3-2 to approve an expansion of their ability to regulate ISPs by treating them as a public utility.
Under the rules, it will be illegal for companies such as Verizon or Cox Communications to slow down streaming videos, games and other online content traveling over their networks. They also will be prohibited from establishing "fast lanes" that speed up access to Web sites that pay an extra fee. And in an unprecedented move, the FCC could apply the rules to wireless carriers such as T-Mobile and Sprint -- a nod to the rapid rise of smartphones and the mobile Internet. ... The FCC opted to regulate the industry with the most aggressive rules possible: Title II of the Communications Act, which was written to regulate phone companies. The rules waive a number of provisions in the act, including parts of the law that empower the FCC to set retail prices — something Internet providers feared above all. However, the rules gives the FCC a variety of new powers, including the ability to: enforce consumer privacy rules; extract money from Internet providers to help subsidize services for rural Americans, educators and the poor; and make sure services such as Google Fiber can build new broadband pipes more easily.
"IT'S (probably*) A TRAP!"
- Rear Admiral Akquixotic of the Mon Calamari
*: There's a small chance that this will end up actually helping consumers. A broken clock is right twice a day, and a reg-captured FCC occasionally does things that benefit the common man.
For example, the Block C Open Access provisions on Verizon and AT&T's LTE bands (or at least some of them) are what prevented these carriers from preventing tethering or the use of custom devices. Any FCC-certified device, rooted or not, tethering or not, can be on those bands, and there's nothing the carrier can do to stop it without breaking the law.
Those provisions have been a lifesaver for many customers of these two carriers who want to use the LTE from their phone to tether a laptop on the go, but don't want to pay extra or buy dedicated hardware for it. So the FCC definitely helped in a pragmatic sense with those rules.
Then again, I'm sure the industry coalitions have fully formed lawsuits written up, signed, in the envelope, and just waiting to be mailed when this decision hit. Who knows how long it'll be until the results of this trickle down through carrier policy and plan offerings to affect the everyman?
They do that out here. The cities have laid a fiber network and charge a small fee to anyone who hooks up to it. The providers are all given equal access to that network. We have 12 of them, and they fight tooth and nail to get your business. No caps, cheap costs, and customer service just this side of fellatio.
Yep. I have had to fight with them on so many levels, in both personal and professional settings; they were bad actors. They've brought regulation on themslelves because they've done bad things and then they've tried to shut down discussion of the issue while stonewalling any form of redress. I can't wait for them to become a utility, as in France, where the speeds to the curb are a damn sight faster than here in the Valley....
"Truth is what works" -- William James "It works!!" -- o-dark-AM comment
I'm in a city of 50,000, in a country of 4.5 million. I have more choices than I can poke a stick at. The company that owns the copper is not allowed to sell internet access and the wholesale price they charge is regulated.
There's also fibre.
Last year netflix was paying comcast extra fees to not be in a 'slow lane'. I imagine by now Netflix is going to stop payment.
it's what the populace wants, what the corporations didn't
All sorts of corporations wanted this passed.
It's 300 pages. Does what *you* wanted take 300 pages to express? No? HMM.
Good luck with that, as the saying goes. I am really looking forward to you all finding out what has really happened today.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Cpmcast will win their lawsuite too.
The FCC back in 1998 already determined with well thought out reasoning that congress never intended the internet to be regulated under title 2 and stated so clearly with lots of supporting evidence that its intent was as an information service. They even mention their computers II working paper that the 1998 law was modeled after. No law concerning this has changed since either.
You can find this report in ghe federal register as the bi anual report to congress on accessability or something like that. It is the only FCC report to congress in march or may of 1988. The internet stuff is around page 28 or so. I am posting from a phone so your google finger will have to look it up.
Once again, this is about logical net neutrality, not physical net neutrality, which is a whole other ball of wax. This is about making sure that Comcast doesn't charge you extra for access to NetFlix or Twitch.tv, and then turn around and charge NetFlix and Twitch.tv more to access you. Because prior to Title II classification, that was entirely possible.
Local loop unbundling is not a simple thing and does have significant technical barriers and significant cost. Politics is a slow, gradual, arduous process. It will take time to get where we need to be. Don't proclaim the journey a failure because the first step was taken with the left foot instead of the right.
The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
As a Libertarian, I am often dismayed by other Libertarians saying "all regulation is bad". But that's not the actual Libertarian philosophy. Which is "the minimum regulation that works". Too many have seemed to forget those all-important last 2 words.
If you're a Libertarian how do you feel about the second vote, the one where the FCC is claiming for itself the authority to preempt State level legislation against municipal broadband services? I am not a Libertarian, nor a Republican, but I find that vote extremely disturbing; it has always been the sole province of the States to set the parameters within which their political subdivisions operate. If New York State wishes to preclude my municipality from setting up an ISP what business is that of the FCC? Can the Feds also preempt a decision that precludes municipalities from operating solid waste services? Sewer services?
I am generally supportive of what the FCC is trying to do with Title II but they're going a bridge too far if they think it's appropriate to step into the middle of the relationship between States and their political subdivisions. Three of five unelected Federal bureaucrats do not get to override the parameters my State Legislature sets for my city.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Unfortunately, regulating greed doesn't work. You have to fix the problem. You have to have a society of people that aren't greedy. Good luck with that!
It worked pretty well with telephones for 40-50 years. Granted, significant corruption was leaking in toward the end, but for a very long time the ill effects of monolithic monopoly were kept at bay, while we kept the advantages (i.e., world's best interoperability, reasonable rates for their day).
During that time, in some countries in Europe which allowed competition in the market, you couldn't call the neighbor on one side because he was using a different phone company, and even the respective voltages were not compatible. And you couldn't call the other neighbor on the other side, because she was on yet a different company. And there were 3 times as many wires on the poles.