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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 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.
“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!
"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.
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.
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!
Charging content providers for bandwidth in addition to end users is the opposite of the right idea.
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.
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.
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.
Actually, I can:
https://consumerist.com/2014/02/23/netflix-agrees-to-pay-comcast-to-end-slowdown/
https://www.extremetech.com/computing/186576-verizon-caught-throttling-netflix-traffic-even-after-its-pays-for-more-bandwidth
I'm sure there is more.
Why is it every gloom&doom prediction I see about net neutrality is WHERE WE ALREADY ARE...?!
"Prediction: within 10 years, Windows will be a Linux distribution." Me, 7-6-2016
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.
Net Neutrality was the de-facto law of the land until ISPs began to upset the balance, beginning with the Comcast/Netflix debacle. This is the functional, traditional way it has worked, and that is why we cannot point to many distinct problems yet, but if you look just below the surface it isn't hard to take this to it's logical conclusion and see that ISPs will jump at the chance to use this as another way not to provide more or better service, but in fact to provide less or worse service, so that they might hold decent service at a premium (or restrict it to their own sites, applications, various new corporate sub-internets that will emerge as a result of this preference for restricting traffic).
Random Citizen Calls FCC Chairman a 'Mistake'
Yes... but now anybody with a piece of hardware in the middle can set up a toll booth. It's the opposite of a free and open internet.
For many years, whenever I wanted to watch netflix during peak time, the connection was laggy and low-quality. If I wanted to watch pay-per-view from my ISP (also a video provider, so a competitor to netflix) I always got perfect quality.
This was because my ISP purposely kept their bandwidth to netflix low. The other ISP in my area did the same thing.
So... there is a single example. You can never again say that you have never heard a single example.
I also recall a few cases of ISPs (who also sold telephone service) intentionally degrading VOIP connections.
DHCP killed that one.
If I could have my own permanent IP address, that would be a great idea.
www.sjbaker.org
No we aren't. I run a dozen web sites for myself, my family, my home business, my wife's home business. None of those are Facebook pages.
www.sjbaker.org
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.
.
Is it the responsibility of the FCC to maximize the profits of ISPs?
You can have a fixed IP, but it isn't free.
Dynamic DNS can make it all work anyhow.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
out of the mouths of trash appointed by our faux president.
Sorry, just noticed that I wasn't logged in when I posted this. There was quite a bit of work done to implement this idea in the mid 1990's but a combination of a lack of ubiquitous hardware (cellphones were analog and none could run applications and routers cost thousands of dollars from Cisco) and intense offensive efforts on the part of telcos and some government agencies ultimately killed it and scuttled much of the work already done. Today's landscape and issues are different and perhaps it is time to implement this with fresh ideas.
Other than lip service did Wheeler actually enact anything that had a real effect?
He helped prevent the Comcast/TW merger.
He pushed Title II order to require ISP's to follow Net Neutrality rules.
He extended the Lifeline subsidy program to help poor people buy broadband.
He lowered phone prices for inmates.
He overhauled the FCC's Enforcement Bureau.
Just a few..
I should be able to get that speed most of the time from a Google server that is across the country.
Your ISP cannot guarantee, and should not be expected to do so, data speeds to any service that is not on the network controlled by that ISP. You "should be able to" is an admission that sometimes you won't, and that would break any promised fixed data rate.
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.
Yes, which is logical. The ISP controls only their own network. Thus, speed tests can only show ISP data rates when run on the ISP network exclusively. You sound like you don't want the ISP to tweek internal data speeds on its own network.
Why do liberals always want to bring race into something. And then call me racist because I'm a White Male Conservative. Yet I'm the bad one.
Because the rose colored glasses and wotnot I think. Still trying to figure that one out myself.
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.
Buy domain name: $10-15 a year (depending on which registrar you use)
Get a Managed VPS server: $40 a month.*
Set up WordPress: Free**
Use a free WordPress theme: Free
Spend some time setting up the theme: Essentially free.
Now, you might want to hire a web developer (such as myself) to fine tune the site and tweak the design to make it look nicer, but at a base you're talking about spending under $500 a year to host a website without any connection to Amazon, Facebook, or another large organization.
* You could get a Shared Hosting setup and might be able to save some cash, but those tend to be horrible for anything other than a "postcard website."
** I know some people hate WordPress. Personally, I like it. Either way, I was using it as an option that people could use to set up their own website inexpensively. There are tons of other options out there that have nothing to do with Amazon/Facebook so feel free to replace WordPress with some other CMS.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Good thing you didn't have to deal with any of those soul-less corporations to have the privilege of a web presence.
"Prediction: within 10 years, Windows will be a Linux distribution." Me, 7-6-2016
Do you pay for a domain? Do you pay for hosting? Were those guys you paid money to huge, soul-less corporations, or neighborhood ma&pa domain registrar and hosting shoppes?
How the fuck do you run a website when you can't THINK?!
"Prediction: within 10 years, Windows will be a Linux distribution." Me, 7-6-2016
"...but Obama was for it, so I know I'm against it."
Under Obama I lost unlimited data and my cell phone bill tripled in 8 years. Trumps been in office for a month and Pai has had the FCC for a few weeks and my cellphone bill is down 40$ a month and I now have unlimited data again. So yes, Obama was for it and I am against it. Thank you Trump.
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.
This was because my ISP purposely kept their bandwidth to netflix low. The other ISP in my area did the same thing.
Peering and network egress. They want predictable charges (and profit!) and so push their own service in liew of those outsiders that they have to pay to access.
It's not just NetFlix, it's access to the entire internet. NetFlix and YouTube are just a (large bandwidth) part of it. I don't see why people don't mention the larger picture.
-----
You've got Mr. Comcast's house and Miss AT&Ts house, next door to each other, but completely separate. Both are completely wired and have lots and lots of rooms, and a basement where all of the equipment lives for each house.
Johnny Comcast fires up his phone and connects wirelessly. Jimmy Comcast connects his Ethernet cable in the room across the hall. They BOTH talk to servers downstairs running Kodi, email, ESPN, and what-not. And they play multi-user games with everyone else in the house.
Next Door, Jane AT&T and Julie AT&T do the same thing with their own servers in their own basement. All of them use their computers 24 hours a day to interact with their siblings. (kids these days -- they NEVER sleep!)
And both parents are happy -- the kids are busy using free* internal resources (* well, they'd have to keep those servers up anyway) and the kids even pay the parents part of their bi-weekly allowance. Life is good.
SUDDENLY DISASTER -- puberty! Johnny discovers Jane and vice-versa. They begin to email, then talk, then video-stream to each other. "Use our basement servers? Hell no, I've got someone else to talk to now."
So how does the House of Comcast and House of AT&T actually talk to each other? Well DUH -- they have an ISP who charges internet usage fees. [It's an analogy, give me a break!] Suddenly the negligible predictable outside fees become outrageous because the kids are now always talking outside their own network. Those weekly fees the kids pay are suddenly going to the outside upstream ISP and not profiting the house. INGRATES! Even worse, we can completely control the network costs within the house but can't control access or fees going outside. And we can't stop them!
Well, no, but the next best thing: if we don't pay our ISP bill they'll shut us off but we can limit the outgoing bandwidth and more importantly those unpredictable corresponding fees. If you want it bad enough you'll just put up with it and if you don't you'll switch back to our servers in the basement. [Basement cat anyone?]
Now, exit analogy: Comcast and AT&T are "Real People (tm)", the houses are each corporations, the rooms are cities, WiFi wireless is actually 3G/4G/5G cell access, the offspring are the customers, the monthly payments are real and so is the network egress problem. The more you talk outside their network the more it costs them (for no good reason in their eyes) so they try to entice you to stay internal and/or make you suffer to visit outside sites. They'll put up with GeoCities and BestBuy, but NetFlix? You're paying someone ELSE, using up all of our bandwidth, and not paying US for it? Insufferable! Outrageous! How rude!
THIS is the problem. I've heard that "Network Neutrality" -- the real, actual law -- is a misleading name akin to the Patriot Act and does something else; I haven't looked into that. But the IDEA is that internet PIPES connecting to CONTENT shouldn't restrict bandwidth. If they can overall minimize bandwidth somehow, great. And if not, that's fine too -- do your connectivity jobs and handle it. (Conversely you are going to have occasional network limiting spikes. Who's to say how much is acceptable? Well that would be the customer *IF* they had some place else to go.)
If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?
Under Obama I lost unlimited data and my cell phone bill tripled in 8 years.
Do you know what else happened in the last 8 years? iOS and Android were released (Ok, iOS technically was released in 2007, but close enough). About 1.3 billion smartphones were added to the market globally. And speeds increased from about 1Mbps to close to 100Mbps. Do you think maybe it's supply and demand that drove your price up, or do you think it's Net Neutrality and Obama that did it? I'm not a fan of everything Obama did, but Net Neutrality was the right answer for the consumer.
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.
Actually I'm a retired guy that lives out in an unincorporated area in Texas. I don't use Facebook. My social life is having friends visit but more than once a month is a busy month. My nearest neighbour is over a half mile away and the next nearest is a mile. The nearest store is 7 miles. The city is a 40 mile trip each way. Cable doesn't reach here and the telcos abandoned their copper lines years ago - I have a tree pulling down phone wires between poles outside but Verizon won't be bothered to come out to deal with for at least the last 4 years. Cell coverage was spotty at best - you had to go outside and find the sweet spot to call - until AT&T put in a tower just over a mile away about 2 years ago. The bare phone manages to cover that distance just fine. Wifi would need help, but having put in wireless broadband networks even an old PCMCIA wifi card can manage 15 miles reliably with a good antenna and some thought. It takes more to seed a rural area but even an old unmodified DLink wifi router can service an area of several square miles with the right antenna.
Mesh networks are great but the ones I've seen in use these days are not very scalable and require manual setups. There are a lot of issues that would have to be addressed not the least of which are the human use ones. Just remember that the point of the Internet was initially to connect all the little isolated networks that were out there using routers and it wasn't until around 2000 that that changed into the carrier model we have today.
So paying the digital equivalent of protection money is your solution to not having regulation?
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
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.
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
Where in the hell have you seen speeds increase from 1-100Mbps. I still have the same 10Mbps I got in 2005.
Net Neutrality regulation was not about net neutrality, it only legitimized the content prioritization which was unofficially happening even though it was technically illegal for common carriers. The "net neutrality" pretty much guaranteed that providers could prioritize their content simply by zero-rating it and limiting bandwidth to *all* other providers. It's neutral in that they no longer are allowed to discriminate against a particular service, they just discriminate against all of them.
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You were talking about having to go through gigantic organizations. While you do need to pay a registrar and a hosting company, there are plenty to choose from. You could go with a large company like GoDaddy or a smaller outfit. You can avoid companies that you don't like or switch companies if the one you're with does something you don't like. If you think you can go through life (much less making a website) without dealing with corporations at all, you're sorely mistaken. Fortunately, web hosting/registrars is one place where there's a healthy competition instead of a giant monopoly/duopoly.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Municipal broadband is also a mistake, as are ISPs who don't make their pizzo.
Alright - one more time.
Netflix's peering deal is that they will enter into a no-cost peering agreement with ISP's and place caching devices in said ISP's datacenters to service Netflix customers who are subscribers of the aforementioned ISP's. This has the benefit of minimizing bandwidth costs for everyone. Netflix pays less to the content delivery networks and tier 1 backbone providers, and the ISP's pay less to the tier 1 backbone providers for data transfer charges. It's a win-win. However, Comcast resists this because Netflix competes with their cable TV offerings and on-demand video services. They refuse this deal for strategic reasons.
But, that's not what the parent AC poster was talking about. When customers pay for an Internet connection, they expect to get reasonably good access to all the Internet has to offer based on the connection speed they pay for. If the fees an ISP collects is not enough, they should charge their ISP customers more. ISP's should not deliberately degrade throughput from an Internet based service, lie about the cause for the degradation, and then shake down the Internet service to pay for improved throughput. That kind of behavior looks a whole lot like extortion and racketeering, and it is exactly what Comcast did to Netflix. Don't forget that over half of US broadband customers are Comcast users. Netflix can not afford to write off that many customers as unservicable.
Extortion - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Extortion (also called shakedown, outwrestling, and exaction) is a criminal offense of obtaining money, property, or services from an individual or institution, through coercion.
Racket (crime) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
A racket is a service that is fraudulently offered to solve a problem, such as for a problem that does not exist, that will not be put into effect, or that would not otherwise exist if the racket did not exist. Conducting a racket is racketeering.
It's time to figure out a 2n'd Internet. Let them devour each other on the old one.
So then we get VPNs? The internet has a way of routing around damage.