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FCC Posts Its 400-Page Net Neutrality Order
jriding sends word that the FCC has released new rules outlining its recently officialized role as internet regulator. Simply titled "Open Internet FCC-15-24A1," the order runs 400 pages. The actual text of the new rules is only 305 words long. [FCC head Tom] Wheeler said reclassifying broadband as an utility gives the FCC its best shot at withstanding legal challenges. The courts have twice tossed out earlier rules aimed at protecting Internet openness. The FCC chairman has said repeatedly the agency does not intend to set rates or add new taxes to broadband bills. More than 100 pages of the 400-page document released Thursday explain that forbearance. AT&T had hinted it would file a lawsuit once the new rules become public. The company's chief lobbyist, Jim Cicconi, didn't indicate Thursday when or even if AT&T would sue — only that the battle is far from over. "Unfortunately, the order released today begins a period of uncertainty that will damage broadband investment in the United States," Cicconi said. "Ultimately, though, we are confident the issue will be resolved by bipartisan action by Congress or a future FCC, or by the courts."
....by whether or not AT&T sues.
"Ultimately, though, we are confident the issue will be resolved by bipartisan action by Congress or a future FCC, or by the courts."
AKA, We will get our way once we buy off enough people.
Ever notice that 'uncertainty' seems to always be something that someone else is responsible for?
I think he means that they'll be bribing^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hcontributing to both political parties to pass some laws.
In case the 500 pages scare off anyone, he's the TDLR version:
1) No Blocking - An ISP can't block legal content for any reason. So Comcast can't decide that you can't get to Disney's website anymore because they are having a cable TV dispute with Disney over ESPN.
2) No Throttling - An ISP can't say "you have broadband Internet" and then tell you "you've used too much so now you're stuck at dial-up speeds." If they want to have caps - e.g. only 500GB of data per month - they need to clearly specify this limitation. ("the Order builds on the strong foundation established in 2010 and enhances the transparency rule for both end users and edge providers, including by adopting a requirement that broadband providers always must disclose
promotional rates, all fees and/or surcharges, and all data caps or data allowances")
3) No Paid Prioritization - An ISP can't tell a website that the website will be slowed down unless they pay for "fast lane access." (Note: This doesn't mean the ISP can't sell users faster speeds for more money. Just that ISPs can't try to double-dip by charging web content providers to allow/speed up their traffic through the ISP's network as well as charging users for the Internet access to get the web content.)
All in all, pretty common sense stuff. It's a shame that it had to come down to a government agency saying this, but the ISPs only have themselves (and their greed) to blame.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
As posted by the Washington Post to Scribd. Since my submission was rejected.
The rules start on page 283.
You mean how dirty phone calls are illegal? Or porn on cable TV? Or fearmongering on the Internet?
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Having the government enforce neutrality is actually a very good thing. You read slashdot, so you must be at least a little bit technically inclined, so let me explain what prompted this. Net neutrality has been the default state of the internet since its beginning. How it works :
- Someone runs a service on a computer and needs it accessible to the internet. This range from big (search engine, email) to tiny and personal (minecraft server, voice chat like teamspeak). They pay an ISP to connect their servers to the internet.
- End users want access to the internet. They pay an ISP to connect their home to the internet.
ISPs would charge each according to their needs (link speed, usage, etc) Obviously, there's more than one ISP, so they connect to each others through high-capacity links. This is called peering.
At first, anybody could be an ISP because it used a phone line. You'd dial a number, connect to your ISP and then gain access to the internet. Competition during those days was fierce and customers were fought over. Then, higher speed were needed. Sending data through an encoded voice channel was not sufficient anymore, so cable and telephone companies started using the copper lines directly. This practically killed competition because, unlike with phone lines, ISPs didn't have to give access to their infrastructure to competitors. Obviously, you can't allow 30 different companies to dig under the streets and wire different cables to every house, so what you do is you allow only one or two, but you regulate it. This is called a natural monopoly.
Now, these companies are huge and they essentially have a captive customer base. Some customers may have a choice between two providers (mostly phone or cable), but that means that two companies will control any local market. What this means is that they can both raise prices, and as long as they charge mostly equivalent prices, they make much more profit than if they competed to bring price down. This is called an oligarchy.
These companies finally realized that they had even more power than they first thought. They said "Hey, we've got 30% of the whole country as customers on our own network, why not exploit this as a money source by cutting off access to them unless we get paid?". So now, service companies like Google, in addition to paying for their own internet access, have to pay the individual ISPs for access to their customers. These customers don't have any choice in the matter, because of our natural monopoly. Genius! That's what Comcast and Verizon tried to do companies like Netflix and Google (youtube).
This isn't how the internet is supposed to work and it's obvious that the telcos aren't adding any value by doing this. They are only abusing their monopolies as middle-men to extort money for services already paid for. This what what prompted this whole legislation.
It baffles me how little people seem to be aware of the issue. Every single person who knows how the internet works thinks this law was needed and the only dissenting views are simply preying on ignorance.
Religion is the best example of mass psychosis
The actual issue is that Verizon was peering with the Neflix ISP (Cogent) with a 2Gbps link for ALL of their customers. The NOC where that link was located had plenty of capacity on the cogent side, but Verizon was refusing to upgrade it. Netflix even offered to buy them the router (we're talking only like $25K here) so that they could upgrade to a 10Gbps link, but Verizon flatly refused unless they were paid money. There was no internal congestion at all on Verizon's network that justified this. I'd say the issue was pretty clearly on Verizon's side there.
Religion is the best example of mass psychosis
AT&T has been laying fiber for their U-Verse rollout. They dug up a whole bunch of land in town here a few years ago, and when they were done, the salesman came by to ask if we wanted to sign up for the newly available U-Verse.
The AT&T sales guy came around a couple of weeks ago to tout the new fiber rollout in my area. Here's how it went:
AT&T guy: "Did you know that AT&T is laying fiber in your area?"
Me: "No, that's great. How fast is the fastest speed you'll be offering when it's in?"
AT&T: "Let me look...[rifles through papers]...says here it will be 18 Mbps."
Me: "That's already available here now over your copper lines."
AT&T: "Really? What do you have now?"
Me: "I've got a 12 Mbps U-verse business account with five static IPs. The 18 Mbps service is already too expensive for such a small bump, and it doesn't sound like the fiber offering is otherwise going to make any difference at all for me. The *only* reason I'm with AT&T is that Comcast has a ridiculous installation fee for business accounts."
The guy hemmed and hawed a little bit more, and eventually left looking rather dejected. Seriously, only 18 Mbps over fiber?
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
I'm going to reply to my own comment for the sake of not being disingenuous by omission.
The whole Verizon / Cogent peering issue was a little more complicated that. Initially, peering agreements were made between ISPs and they were fairly simple to manage. If one side was generating an unbalanced amount of traffic, they had to pay the other side.
The problem is that only worked when ISPs had the same profile : some servers, some end-users. Cogent doesn't provide service to end users, only to big businesses. As a consequence, almost all of their traffic is push, with very little flowing the other way. ISPs like Verizon took that as an excuse to claim that the peering was unbalanced, even if all the requests for that bandwidth was coming from their own users. The truth is that Verizon is already charging their users for that bandwidth, so requiring the other side to pay for access to their network is basically extortion.
The only reason they were able to do that at all is because of the natural monopoly that they have regarding the "last mile" cabling into people's home. Regulation is the only way to keep competition healthy when you have these natural monopolies in place. Verizon wanted to have their cake and eat it too. This is why this law was badly needed.
Religion is the best example of mass psychosis
You're wrong. Have you read the document? It boils down to only 3 things, which are exactly about net neutrality :
- No throttling of lawful data, no matter the source or destination.
- No blocking lawful data, no matter the source or destination.
- No paid prioritization, no matter the source or destination.
That's all there's in this law. Nothing else. How exactly is this a bad law?
Religion is the best example of mass psychosis