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Cable Companies Urge Judges To Kill 'Net Neutrality' Rules
An anonymous reader quotes Reuters:
Trade associations representing wireless, cable and broadband operators on Friday urged the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to reverse...the Federal Communications Commission's so-called net neutrality rules, put in place last year to make internet service providers treat all internet traffic equally...
The cable groups said the court should correct "serious errors" in a decision "that radically reshapes federal law governing a massive sector of the economy, which flourished due to hundreds of billions of dollars of investment made in reliance on the policy the order throws overboard".. In its filing on Friday, the CTIA said it was illegal to subject broadband internet access to "public-utility style, common carrier regulation" and illegal to impose "common-carrier status on mobile broadband."
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said he wasn't surprised to see "the big dogs" challenging net neutrality.
Compare cable TV providers at Wirefly.
The cable groups said the court should correct "serious errors" in a decision "that radically reshapes federal law governing a massive sector of the economy, which flourished due to hundreds of billions of dollars of investment made in reliance on the policy the order throws overboard".. In its filing on Friday, the CTIA said it was illegal to subject broadband internet access to "public-utility style, common carrier regulation" and illegal to impose "common-carrier status on mobile broadband."
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said he wasn't surprised to see "the big dogs" challenging net neutrality.
Compare cable TV providers at Wirefly.
News at 11: Liars lie.
It would serve them right if the court just turned around and declared that cable and internet service providers are all in the category of "common carriers" and should be regulated and controlled as such. Bazinga.
A video byte is a video byte -- except when it isn't and it gets a free pass.
This is an attempt to stop them from acting like a gateway charging access. It isn't the difference between gramma'e email and Netflix. It is Netflix and some cable company's new video service.
Do you like the cable company selling you a service at a speed, then demanding, secretly, a cut of what you pay Netflix, or the cable company will crappify your Netflix video -- making a lie out of what they promised you for the cable service?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
"billions of dollars of investment"
If they spent this much money without taking into account that this legislation could come down the pike they'd be amateurs.
Of course this is just a smokescreen, they did the math up front. This is still profitable, just not as much as it could be.
Look no further than Canada to see what a lack of net neutrality looks like
1) Expensive (minimum $85 to get ANY internet service)
2) Unbundled packages save you nothing
3) To get things like HBO, you have to spend over $100 in package bundles
4) Each carrier has their own garbage-tier VOD service that only has the last 1 or 2 episodes, and sometimes not even that if it's a childrens show. This is because they came with their own Netflix-clones for watching entire seasons of the exact same VOD material.
5) And if you switch carriers, you have to pay for data on top of the subscription cost to use those netflix-clones.
Basically the Canadian carriers are trying to "kill netflix" by using the bandwidth caps against it's users and then go "but you can use Shomi if you use Rogers/Shaw, or Crave if you use Bell/Telus for only another $10 per month" when you can pay an extra $15 and just get the unmetered package.
The requirement, should be: The Cable, Telephone, and Fiber networks shall only be a "dumb pipe", any content can go over it. The congestion controls should be set at the switching points, not the ISP. If a neighborhood is "saturated" then that neighborhood is checked for who is using a disproportionate amount of bandwidth, sent a "speeding ticket" that tells them they will be downgraded to 8Mbits until they explain how they are using that bandwidth.
Why work to earn loyal customers when you can just tip the scales against your competition?
Twinstiq, game news
This is a massive sector for unelected officials to rewrite.
It needs to be rewritten. It's past time to turn the internet (into a dumb pipe) and even cellular service into a public utility, just like the land line. If Congress won't do it, the courts must. And if they don't, we need to put the initiative on the ballot. We endure lousy service only because of public apathy.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
If Congress won't do it, the courts must.
The courts are not supposed to be in the business of writing law. That means if Congress won't do it, the courts have even less business doing it.
And if they don't, we need to put the initiative on the ballot.
You wish for a patchwork of internet regulation on a state-by-state basis? What a minefield that would be.
If you are trying to point out that his taxes subsidize the cable companies there, let me be the bearer of bad news - so do ours (in America). We just don't get to see the benefit.
Privatize profits, socialize losses and all that.