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.

Comments

Really? Arguing against Common Carrier?

[PvtVoid]

Never mind that nothing fits the definition of "common carrier" better than a service which sends packets over the inter-tubes. If the Cable Co's want to argue in court that they aren't common carriers, that is terribly dangerous for them: it sets a precedent that means that they are not afforded the protections given common carriers under the law, most important immunity from prosecution for transmission of illegal content.

Careful what you wish for, Comcast.

Re:Really? Arguing against Common Carrier?

[fustakrakich]

One of the reasons they don't want to be a public utility is that they want those censorship powers. If they had their way, all you would get is Facebook and Amazon.

Re:comcast wants you to buy HBO with cable tv and

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Insulting the judge's intelligence

[Calydor]

Those are the billions of TAX PAYER dollars they were given to build out the infrastructure, but they leave out that little detail.

Re:They should be fined for acting like babies

[AK Marc]

The FCC is supposed to be writing the rules. That's what the law says. Cable Companies are trying to strike down the FCC, because the law gives the FCC the power to write regulations.

Re:USA internet access is too expensive to be hone

[Sparowl]

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.