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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.
4-5 years in the courts...
Is there is no local loop unbundling. This was the real solution. With competition to supply the service who cares if comcast or time warner are pieces of crap. You can drop them like hot potatoes. Instead we have more control and less freedom.
What process has been in secret? He has been open from the start. Just because republicans state it has been a secret does not actually mean it has been, unless you watch Fox news.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
this seems to good to be true... it's what the populace wants, what the corporations didn't, and it makes sense.
I can't correlate this with being a current government agency that interfaces between the public and commerce...
after so many time being disappointed by the choices our government makes i guess im in battered wife syndrome type shock.
No need. Taxpayers already gave Comcast and Verizon $2.5Bn to ensure that rural broadband is set up.
Of course, they immediately used it to increase executive salaries and pay out bonuses to themselves- but they will do as they promised eventually, right? Its only been 10 years, it would be absurd to expect some sort of progress on this already.
Because of course they've avoided raising their rates out of the kindness of their hearts, but all of this new regulation is forcing them to do it against their will.
I keep hearing from free-market capitalists that prices would naturally trend towards whatever the market will bear. If that's true, then regulation would never increase prices. After all, if the sellers could get away with raising the price, they would have already done so.
As I understand it, the FCC and the description of common carriers under "Title II" of the Communications Act of 1934 was created by Congress. The FCC is ruling that Internet Service Providers are "common carriers" under the language of Title II, and not "information service providers" under the language of Title I. This ruling includes adjustments/interpretations of the Title II language as the FCC envisions it would be applied to Internet Service Providers.
The FCC didn't give themselves this authority, the FCC was created by Congress to have this authority.
How companies like Time Warner will defeat Net Neutrality: Self-divestiture.
The "Time Warner Cable/Internet" you know of today becomes a myriad of companies specifically designed to continue on with business as usual while still adhering to the letter of the law:
- Time Warner Broadband - a company which does nothing more than operate Hybrid-Fiber-Coax outside plant (the actual wires on the actual poles).
- Time Warner Cable - a company which leases spectrum from TWB (above), and provides cable-video service on that outside plant
- Time Warner Transit - a company which does nothing more than provide wholesale (non-retail, non-mass-market) internet connectivity to ISPs and other service providers. As a wholesaler, TWT is not encumbered by net neutrality regulations.
- Time Warner Internet - a company which leases spectrum from TWB (above) to provide IP connectivity to end-users. It obtains *all* of its internet connectivity from TWT (above), and charges metered billing to all its end-users (you pay a flat rate PLUS you pay "by the bit", the same way you pay for water or electric today).
Netflix, et al, will have to tithe properly to TWT if they want access to TWI's customers, since TWT is the only path to GET to TWI's customers. The FCC can't really punish TWI for this move, without opening up an even messier Pandora's box of trying to tell ISPs "which upstreams they HAVE to obtain connectivity from".
Yes, it'll all be a LITTLE more complicated than that, but they've got teams of lawyers to work out the details.
Rush Limbaugh remembers the days of the fairness doctrine. There are a handful of politicians who think it should make a comeback. I'm not a big fan of Mr. Limbaugh's but in his defense if you read what has been said by supporters of the Fairness Doctrine it would send shivers up your spine:
The shooting is cause for the country to rethink parameters on free speech, Clyburn said from his office, just blocks from the South Carolina Statehouse. He wants standards put in place to guarantee balanced media coverage with a reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine, in addition to calling on elected officials and media pundits to use 'better judgment.'
Most people, left or right would recoil whenever a politician starts talking about a need to rethink the "parameters of free speech."
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.