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FCC Chairman Calls Net Neutrality a 'Mistake' (theverge.com)
FCC chairman Ajit Pai said today that net neutrality was "a mistake" and that the commission is now "on track" to return to a much lighter style of regulation. The Verge adds: "Our new approach injected tremendous uncertainty into the broadband market," Pai said during a speech at Mobile World Congress this afternoon. "And uncertainty is the enemy of growth." Pai has long been opposed to net neutrality and voted against the proposal when it came up in 2015. While he hasn't specifically stated that he plans to reverse the order now that he's chairman, today's speech suggests pretty clearly that he's aiming to. [...] Pai's argument is that internet providers were doing just fine under the old rules and that the new ones have hurt investment.
Godamn ads covering the content!
The job of the government shouldn't be to make sure companies can make as much money as they possibly can but to protect the citizens. Net Neutrality aimed to make the playing field even for everyone. I guess he's okay with Comcast/Charter/etc reaming us.
-SaNo
Clearly we're going to Make America Great Again by getting rid of net neutrality.
i'm glad
I'm not clicking your link, but you're correct.
When it was first talked about net neutrality was a good thing. It was quickly shot down and resurrected as a piece of shit that did anything but protect the neutrality of the internet.
The banner ads at the top cover up the article summaries, making them impossible to read.
Since his government is pay to play, why should we dergulate businesses to make it the same.
Are roads next? Brown people pay more to drive on the interstate........
Silence is a state of mime.
And you were an idiot then. And look, here we are a year later, and you have been upgraded to moron. Good job. That is progress.
it was a mistake, commies.
This is so stupid.
The broadband providers are NOT "The Internet" - it's the content providers. Charging content providers for bandwidth instead of end users is the opposite of the right idea.
It'll make it impossible for the ordinary man in the street to set up a website without going though some gigantic organization like Facebook or Amazon or whatever. This will completely stifle innovation and thereby kill the goose that laid the golden egg.
Ask yourself how Wikipedia will continue to exist if it has to pay hundreds to thousands of ISP's for the privilage of using their networks. It'll die.
“Our new approach injected tremendous uncertainty into the broadband market,” ... “And uncertainty is the enemy of growth.”
Then why would you do that?
Your sig here!
And he has maintained from the outset that the FCC has badly handled its definition of what net neutrality means for ISPs and the peering companies that serve them. Pai is intent on removing vague rules and replacing them with specific policy. That most of these "vague rules" happen to cover customer rights is just a bonus.
"Pai's argument is that internet providers were doing just fine under the old rules..."
This tells you everything you need to know about Pai's priorities. When the customers don't even merit a mention in a position statement, you know the FCC has been entirely co-opted to a corporate agenda.
The lobbyists have won. Kindly tell me where the nearest lobbyist pocket is so that I can fill it with cash, cocaine and hookers. Who will think of the poor, poor lobbyists?!
It's not hard to figure out. If your traffic gets prioritized higher over others on existing infrastructure, that's less infrastructure you have to invest in to run your business. Net neutrality actually makes those who use more bandwidth have to spend more to get what they want over those who sip at the pool of bits and bytes. Pai clearly wants to kick the plebes out of the pool, build a wall around it, and allow his capitalist buddies free reign while the rest of the crowd lines up at the gate.
The internet is not a commodity - it's a utility, a means to an end. It's essential that it remains balanced for all.
The consumer has been sold out by the new regime.
That is the problem. They were/are taking government money to expand infrastructure, doing fuckall with it, and making money hand over fist by overcharging for shit service. We do not want them to be doing fine.
Four years to endure this... I can't believe you guys elected this idiot.
"...but Obama was for it, so I know I'm against it."
Deregulation for big money while the little guy gets micro-regulations to put the criminal justice system back on fast track for American growth industry.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
I think it would be better if they simply stated that:
1. If you advertise X speed, then the users gets X speed, every time, all the time.
2. Get rid of this, "Up To" bullshit. no one is interested in some speed you might get once in a while.
3. No traffic is EVER restricted for ANY reason.
4. If you can't support your sales pitch, then either build out to where you can or change your pitch.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
...and he be sat down in a large pile of angry fire ants!
Sounds great. If there's one guy you know you can trust, it's the one that gets paid for lying and selling you out to corporate interests.
I feel how America is getting greater and greater every day - in my anus.
How is that swamp draining going? Seems to me like we just dammed the river downstream and are letting the swamp overtake the farm.
We now have a man under Russian influence appointing people everywhere he can who are dismantling our system of government, government agencies, constitutional rights, and basically anything under the "common good" from arts funding to health care access.
We're being dragged back to the "good old days" of robber barons and into a bold new era of corrupt foreign influence thanks to an alliance of racists, dominionists, terrified old people, nihilistic young people, and those who are so bitter and ignorant they would sacrifice anything at all to "piss off the left".
It's only going to get worse, especially as Trump continues to attack the foundations of everything that let's us fight back.
I've been flagging every as I could as "covering content".
You see ads? I have them all blocked and never see any. No I don't give a shit about slashdot's bad business model. I'd happily pay a subscription but they can't be bothered to give me the option. So fuck 'em and the ad networks they rode in on.
The only 'implementation' of 'Net Neutrality' that is valid, is the one where no data packet gets prioritized or delayed any more than any other data packet. Pretending there's any other definition of 'net neutrality' is at best disingenuous.
So far as the so-called 'investment' by ISPs is concerned, they're not 'investing', they're doing what they always have done: grossly 'overbooking' their network capacity, spin-doctoring advertised throughput speeds, and price-gouging everyone in the process, all in the name of more profits.
Welcome to the Trump Administration, everyone, where the average American is worthless chattel, and corporate America is all that matters. So far as this subject goes, hope you all enjoyed the Golden Age of the Internet, because it's now drawing to a close.
Net Neutrality calls Ajit Pai "a mistake". I'm with Mr. Neutrality on this one!
uncertainty is the enemy of growth
Unchecked growth is a cancer - it needs a few more enemies. Besides, uncertainty favours innovation.
Pai’s general philosophy is that the commission shouldn’t involve itself with basically anything unless there’s a huge market failure
Umm... shouldn't you be trying to prevent "a huge market failure" Mr. Pai, rather than getting involved after the fact? Also, if you ask your constituents, (you know, the people whose interests you're supposed to protect - not to be confused with the corporations from whom you're currying favour), I'm pretty sure they'll tell you that the market is already in a huge state of failure.
Ajit Pai - just another self-serving disaster on the American political scene.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
What's he's mistaken about is that the Internet fundamentally operates on the principle of network neutrality. The net has been more or less neutral since it's inception. To call NN a mistake just shows that he's conflating NN and regulations trying to keep NN in place.
Now, there's plenty of ways to screw up regulation. But we don't want the handful of consolidated ISPs to be allowed to tear down the neutral networks as they've been trying to do. I'd fully support any alternative choices for an ISP that competed with the telecoms, and I was excited for google-fiber, but the telecoms kill those off as fast as they can.
You cannot come up with a single example of how consumers were hurt before net neutrality regulations went into effect. Why? Because there is no example. Indeed the examples that most NN advocates hate the most, like Binge-On, came into being AFTER net neutrality regulations went into effect.
The only example I can think of was some Comcast thing that happened a whole ago - but that Comcase backed out of quickly.
So again, you claim consumers were harmed. Who and when?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This is the part where Slashdot techbros have to twist themselves over to find a way of saying this isn't so bad. Trump can't be wrong, so the people he put in power can't be wrong, so net neutrality is a mistake, QED.
In the ongoing battle against the effects of Comcast's iffy hardware/network, I've been running speed tests every ten minutes for several days. The actual issue being diagnosed in this case is random bouts of upstream constriction; so far, these don't seem to be tied to any activity inside of the network.
The nominal speed of this network is ~117 mbit/s downstream; times are local to the server.
http://pastebin.com/zMUncLei
Pretend that the downstream speed is your line voltage, and anything 100 + is equivalent to nominal. Also pay attention to the times at which the depressions occur; it seems to know no rhyme or reason. During the day, many of these can be attributed to heavy user activity.
Also, a warning about static IPs and Comcast: If you have a static IP through them, you are required to rent one of their routers. They both have issue; the SMC D3G (which we use) has hopelessly broken IPv6 support. The Cisco DPC3941, which we used previously, had bizarre issues with latency that it would impart upon any traffic that crossed it; it also had an unacceptably high rate of random (cable) signal drop-outs and packet loss. We went through two of those before switching to the SMC. I was told at one point that they'd be getting some newer Netgear routers, but I'm not very willing to beta test anything for them.
There is no XUL, only WebExtensions...
If you are going to let providers prioritize some traffic over other traffic, then you better make sure we have access to more than one provider so WE can make a choice. I can't decide if I want to polish my pitchfork, go back to writing virus's, or just burn something down.
Net Neutrality was awesome for the consumer, with Trump's administration, the bulk of the benefits will go to the corporations.. Expect prices to multiple services to go higher for no other reason that killing net neutrality.. ex, Netflix will get charged again for fast lanes and transits.. raising costs to the consumer.
Companies that wont pay will get thrown in slower lanes, expect your online gaming to lag if they dont pay up.. etc
Where the smoke and mirror comes in is the way Pai sends news out, titles like, 'we're cleaning up this mess', 'we're promoting growth', 'we're removing barriers and restrictions set by net neutrality'.. All those benefit big corporations and not the little guy.. They know how to address the US population, people wont go and research these things.. They'll just complain when they receive higher bills from Netflix and blame them, or blame their slow gaming on game companies..
It's going to be a long four years...
The only mistake I see is having this shill as chairman.
AND WELCOME NET HOSTILITY.
Tragically, I'd say upwards of 80% and possibly higher of US internet traffic users utilize only a few large websites so most people won't care and won't notice. This is akin to building and maintaining a super highway with tax dollars right into WalMarts front doors while mainstreet crumbs into a dirt road.
4 years is going to be very painful for a tremendous number of people in this country, whether they want to admit it or not. Though, I'm sure for those truly dedicated to Trumps message, it will always be Obamas fault.
Random Citizen Calls FCC Chairman a 'Mistake'
Other than lip service did Wheeler actually enact anything that had a real effect? Zero ratings and data caps have been all the rage the last couple of years. At the same time old Tom was supposedly "fixing" things. (Obama appointed Pai to the FCC board too. He isn't a Trumpian dark horse.)
Remember that regulation works both ways. Regulation is what has given the ISPs the monopoly they now enjoy. More regulation doesn't automatically mean the people win. One of the first measures they amended was to reduce operating costs for regional ISPs under 250K subscribers by reducing record keeping and meta data retention requirements. The media reported this as an attack on customer "privacy".
Came for ranting about dumb pipes. Left disappointed.
There is no reason that anyone has to own or control the Internet. We are blinded to this by service providers and powerful interests that place their own profit or power over value and utility to customers. All of the routers and cell phones which are ubiquitous today can already talk with with each other if only they had the software to do so. Your phone (or pc or whatever) could keep the packets meant for it and route packets onward to more distant locations through anyone within radio range who would then also do the same. Today this could be done with a routed replacement and some small changes to the wifi and other protocols. With time technology and political will could improve bandwidth and performance to today's expectations and beyond. Instead of using "pipes" owned by corporations and governments it would use the wide open physical space we live in - an open 4 dimensional bandwidth space instead of metered linear pipes. DNS and other necessary services could be implemented as distributed services eliminating another stranglehold. Social networks could exist distributed across user's equipment instead of corporate servers. With encryption built into its core and data traversing the countryside in pieces on random paths it would be extremely difficult to tap, monitor, censor, or control. No backbone or service providers needed. No monthly bills. All of the hardware is already in place! This new free open source global Internet could become a reality in days simply by people installing an app or replacing the firmware on their router.
It would finally implement the "universal service" that the FCC charges you for on your phone bill but has never delivered (the money just goes to the telcos). It would be available to anyone for the one-time cost of the equipment or the installation of a free application on their existing equipment. You could say goodbye to your ISP for good. Of course there is no reason that it couldn't interconnect with the "metered product delivery" services that Verizon, ATT, Comcast, and others want the Internet to be, and, in fact, would take a load off their systems, a problem which they constantly complain about and an excuse they use to limit service and charge extra fees. They could charge tolls for their special services but you wouldn't have to use them. With "net neutrality" and security built into its core a new global Internet owned by everyone and no one would just appear out of nowhere while the "old Internet" would be relegated to being a shopping mall on its periphery.
I right click on the add (In Chrome), and select "Inspect Element". Then I find the parent tag for the offending ad and delete it. Problem solved. But that's a band-aid. The current state of the pop-over ads is so annoying that I am actively looking elsewhere now for my news. After 10+ years, it's time for a new source of my geek news.
I don't expect to get advertised speed each and every time no matter the source of the data. But I should get that speed from major sources even if they are not on my-ISPs network. i.e. I should be able to get that speed most of the time from a Google server that is across the country.
Unfortunatelly, the advertised speed seems to be only to the IPS' own speed test servers which the ISP has tweeked to maximize internal ISP traffic.
.
Is it the responsibility of the FCC to maximize the profits of ISPs?
out of the mouths of trash appointed by our faux president.
One she probably regrets to this day.
That is EXACTLY the Comacst issue i mentioned in my original message, note that it was resolved quickly WITHOUT REGULATION. The Comcast example actually demonstrates exactly my assertion, that network neutrality rules are not needed because the market quickly corrects stupidity (even Comcast level stupidity which is substantial).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
An entity can sell bandwidth or content, not both.
Any QoS or other throttling must be done by class of data (e.g., email, HTTP, RTP streaming) rather than by content provider favoritism. So for example Google vs Bing is a content issue, and an ISP should not be able to favor one search provider over another, but could favor streaming video over HTTP generally.
Bandwidth and data caps can apply as necessary, but need to be honestly metered and reported to customers (so as to allow, e.g., a parent to figure out their kids streamed 100GB of movies last weekend and that's how they went over their cap).
Not sure how to legally define the wiggle-room needed to reflect the real-world as others have pointed out there may be a lot of reasons why data from site A is slower than my paid-for bandwidth ought to provide. But it should be possible for someone to validate bandwidth terms of service that reasonable people can agree that the terms were met.
It's really moot anyway, what little net neutrality rules we had were barely being enforced, rather obviously.
Prepare yourselves for the tiered internet!
Since the Government basically wants to disengage from the issue, guess we as consumers will have to vote with our wallets. Let's hope sanity prevails, against all odds.
FCC Chairman Pai's Keynote to Mobile World Congress, Barcelona
Doesn't seem as bad as the Verge makes it sound.
Read it for yourself.
Another a-hole who has no idea what he's talking and is paid for by the big isp lobbyist's propaganda.
and I call his conception a mistake. his parents should've aborted his ass.
It wont be when you are done.
You rightwingers really really REALLY hate it when people treat you with the scorn you deserve BECAUSE YOU KNOW YOU DESERVE IT. You just don't want to see it because you've tied your identity to the party you're playing for and can only refuse to let yourself see it, and when we call you the shit we and you know you to be, you can't stop it resonating, so you hate what you are and have to hate the other who made you realise this to stop the screams inside.
And when you cry oceans of tears over "fake president", this comes across as hugely ironic when you call "butthurt" over it.
The sad thing is you aren't as bad as you think. Stop believing the party political side defines you 100% and start disagreeing with and debating your party to be a party you can follow and identify with WITHOUT THE SCREAMS OF PAIN.
It's only because f the ISPs trying to get you to hate it that you think that it isn't this.
I can hardly wait for my ISP to start throttling my Netflix back down to unwatchable. #MAGA!
Both of those stories are utterly fake. Consumerist and extremetech have been found constantly to be lying about these things. Find better sources for your iditiotic citations, moron.
Install uBlock Origin, and you will not see any ads. Also, your browser will be faster!
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
Net neutrality is certainty for growing companies. AT&T née SBC, Verizon, Comcast, Time Warner... these are not companies that need a lot of growth. They're already huge. The simple regulation was pretty straightforward.
Not having a neutral network, which actually means not having fair-market pricing and having censorship power over content producers and publishers in the hands of the incumbent network providers means much less certainty for smaller companies that may be trying to grow. Will your customers be able to see your video without paying extra to receive it compared to Comcast's own IP video streaming? Will AT&T disallow traffic from a website that publishes an article critical of AT&T from reaching AT&T customers? This whole "pay to upload and pay to download at the producer, then have the consumer pay to upload and download at their end, then tack on extra costs for the consumer to download the content from only some producers" is an unfair business tactic and a cause of uncertainty among those content producers.
Pai is trying to make things simpler for the biggest companies on the network and much more risky and unknown for absolutely everyone else, and calls that transparency.
This dickhead of an FCC chairman needs to hit the ground and never come back.. what an idiot.
Every government agency intended to protect you from corporate abuse is going to be completely dismantled and all regulations are going into the shitter. Your life is now going to get much worse that you can possibly imagine.
It's only a "mistake" because net neutrality makes the traffic harder to monitor when it can't be categorized. Am I playing video games or whatching questionable porn? As long as net neutrality is in effect, the connections are all treated equally and most connections are SSL these days. So, our overlords have a harder time spying on you. Money makes the world go 'round so that's why it gets the attention, but it's just a red herring. Remember, you are the customer and they need YOU, not the other way around. If people don't realize this soon, the Internet will be treated like we treat gasoline, and the speeds treated like mpg. Large corporations will always need the Internet more than YOU will, but they try to make everyone feel like they have to have it in the same sense they have to have gas to go to work. And because of those corporations, this is all a big bluff to scare you into thinking it's "hurting the Internet" when they know throttling for normal citizens would save THEM money because of the deals that could be made in comparison. Most, even schools, already have a pay by the byte kind of plan but want a better deal. Scare tactics to screw the rest of us out of a better Internet experience with gov backing to ruin privacy is all it is.
Building yachts is a job. Many jobs in fact.
So yes, the money does "trickle down", if you work for it.
Mistake is pointing out a corporation slave/stooge like this guy as the FCC chairman.
Look at all the tears I have for the poor poor ISPs who don't have money to put food on the table of their families.
What a load of bull.
Net neutrality works well and fine in several countries, the only reason why it's bothersome in the US is because it gets in the way of scummy tactics to profit more from consumers and control what sort of content people will be able to watch, empowering monopolies even more.
...but the hands of the telecom puppeteers takes up that space...
CyberKender
Apparently Appointed Lord Mayor of There
"Our new approach injected tremendous opportunity for competition into the broadband market," Pai said during a speech at Mobile World Congress this afternoon. "And competition is the enemy of monopolistic profits."
Municipal broadband is also a mistake, as are ISPs who don't make their pizzo.
It's time to figure out a 2n'd Internet. Let them devour each other on the old one.
Ajit Pai sounds like a tool.
Net neutrality SHOULD BE FOR THE PEOPLE not corporations.
This is how is it apparently for you in USA:
Of the people..
By the people..
For the corporations!
Isn't that what the apathetic fuckwits were so certain of?
Can you name actual actions Obama undertook, with citations, to indicate he had any effect on the price of your cell phone bill. Also, can you specifically name what Trump has done, with citations, that supports your craziness?
Of course not, you're a troll. So no doubt you'll scream at me for being an anon or a liberal instead. (It makes those white cloak wearing voices in your head, happy.)
well I guess I'm lucky that I live in a country that there's net neutrality... well besides filtering w/e they don't like but there are VPNs for that, isn't there? There's this website www.brouz.ir that has apks, software, games, movies and w/e I want and it's all with direct links lel
Get someone who is willing to do the job that they are being paid to do. I see no reason to continue paying people who refuse to do their job.
John Oliver blamed the wrong dingo, and there's babies at risk!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpbOEoRrHyU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkjkQ-wCZ5A