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Tom Wheeler Defends Title II Rules, Accuses Pai of Helping Monopolists (arstechnica.com)
simkel shares a report from Ars Technica: Former Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler spoke out against the FCC's proposed repeal of net neutrality rules this week, saying the repeal will help monopoly broadband providers abuse their dominant position. There's "a monopoly provider for three-quarters of the homes in America, and no choice," Wheeler said in a forum (video) in Arlington, Virginia Monday hosted by US Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.). "When you've only got one provider, who makes the rules? The provider makes the rules." Wheeler was referring to FCC data that shows most Americans live in areas with either one provider of high-speed broadband (at least 25Mbps downstream and 3Mbps upstream) or none at all. With the FCC's new Republican leadership seeking to overturn net neutrality rules, "the question becomes, will giant companies be able to exploit their monopoly position?" Wheeler said. "Who is going to stand up for consumers? Who is going to stand up for innovation? And who is going to stand up for the most important network for determining our future in the 21st century?"
It will save us. For some reasons someone will find tons of money in rolling out infrastructure to fight those established companies and provide us with competition!
To me the problem is that the industry is highly regulated, by the government of course. So, relaxing/repealing net neutrality results in an imbalance.
I would like to see us go either all one way or the other. An examination of the way the Post Office was treated in the first ~100 years of the US would be very instructive to this whole debate. That is how critical the Internet is to us now. I have commented on that previously here on /.
That said, I would be less bothered by the net neutrality relaxing/repeal if there were an accompanying relaxation of the regulations which frequently prevent local municipalities and co-ops from providing competing services.
I live in an area where my options are dial-up, T1, satellite, or microwave. The services are all either slow, expensive, or poor quality (usually all three of those). I have talked with some of my neighbors about what it would take to form a co-op to provide the homes in our area with fibre optic service. We know that there several fibre backbones that pass not very far from us and if we pooled our resources then we could likely provide ourselves far better service than is currently available. Cost would be a bit of an issue up front, but the far more problematic piece of it is the ridiculous level of regulation involved to get anything done. It would take literally years of constant effort to get to where we could even have the first trenches dug.
So, I suffer through having crappy Internet because I really like the area where I live. Net neutrality won't affect me very much personally and I don't think that having it or not having it will result in big monopoly providers extending service to areas they view as unprofitable. For that to happen, there would have to be a mandate for them build out or the government would have to do it. The other option which I mentioned above, people doing it for themselves in the form of co-ops would be a great solution, but for the stifling regulations which are clearly intended precisely to prevent what I am suggesting.