Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Senator Doesn't Buy FCC Justification For Killing Net Neutrality (dslreports.com)

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the boom dept.

From a report: Senator Edward Markey this week questioned FCC boss Ajit Pai's justifications for killing popular net neutrality rules in a hearing in Washington. We've noted repeatedly that while large ISPs claim net neutrality killed broadband investment, objective analysis repeatedly finds that to be a lie. That's not just based on publicly-available SEC filings and earnings reports, but the industry's own repeated comments to investors and analysts. But that doesn't stop AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and Charter (and the ocean of politicians, think tankers, consultants and other PR vessels they employ to make this misleading argument in the media on a daily basis) from making the claim anyway. And while Pai once again this week breathlessly proclaimed that net neutrality put a damper on network investment, Markey simply wasn't having it. "Publicly traded companies are required by law to provide investors accurate financial information, including reporting any risks or financial burdens," Markey said. "However, I have found no publicly traded ISP that has reported to its investors by law that Title II has negatively impacted investment in their networks. Many, in fact, have increased deployment and investment."

8 of 42 comments (clear)

  1. Doesn't matter by phantomfive · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Edward Markey is a member of the democratic party, so at this point he has no power whatsoever in congress. It's great that he feels this way but unless he can convince enough other people to care, then he's just pissing in the wind (ie, pandering to his base).

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    1. Re: Doesn't matter by jordanjay29 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Obama was known for asking Congress to "put a bill on [his] desk" long before he would sign an executive order to do the same thing. He tried constantly to get them to do their jobs, but they were too busy arguing about trivial political points instead.

    2. Re:Doesn't matter by guises · · Score: 2

      The parent was making reference to one of the realities of current American politics: no one cares what you have to say if you're from the other party. This guy can make all of the sensible, logical, truthful, insightful statements that he likes, but as long as he's a Democrat only Democrats are going to listen to him.

      It's a bit of an exaggeration to say this, but sadly not too far from the truth.

    3. Re:Doesn't matter by BlueStrat · · Score: 2

      From andydread ( 758754 ):

      In the US there is no free market in the ISP space.

      From: Rob Y. ( 110975 )

      Not to mention that the nature of these anti-consumer practices (absent any laws to change it) would be mostly invisible to the consumer.

      Change the laws/pass new laws directly addressing net neutrality specifically through Congress where there are elected representatives that can be held accountable directly. Handing it off to a political-appointee-run bureaucracy to write and implement sweeping regulations with the force of federal law (mostly to avoid that accountability in the first place) is asking for trouble.

      Strat

      --
      Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
  2. not the only shaky argument from the FCC on NN... by Jaegs · · Score: 4, Insightful

    From a Gizmodo article about their FOIA request regarding the DDoS attack on the FCC's website:

    "Taken at its word, the FCC’s statement means that for a period of about 15 hours, no one in the agency’s IT department wrote a single email or memo, nor did they take down any notes of any kind about the cyberattack that, according to Chairman Pai, caused a malicious 3000-percent increase in network traffic."

    (http://gizmodo.com/the-fcc-is-full-of-shit-1797124634)

    I've been out of IT for a while, now, but I'm sure others on /. can attest to how impossible this is.

  3. That's because there is no justification by Letophoro · · Score: 2

    The only reason that the large ISPs hated NN was that it didn't allow them to use their typical "if value, then money" rent-seeking monopolistic means testing.

    They were forced to provide a service for a fixed fee that could not be adjusted based on the perceived value of the transfer of bits to the customer. That is, if video is important, then obviously providers like Netflix should pay a higher rate. Even better, customers should pay a higher rate to get those bits from Netflix in a "Giga Blast Video Extreme" network package.

    After all, why charge only one side of the equation when both the provider and the consumer can be charged?

    1. Re:That's because there is no justification by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Netflix is charged for internet access.
      The consumer is charged for internet access.
      The consumer is charged for netflix.

      So the ISPs are already burning the candle at both ends and the consumer gets burned twice. And that is in the best, most net-neutral of cases.

      They want to charge both the provider, and the consumer, again, for the nature of their use (above and beyond the bits for which they are both already paying).

    2. Re:That's because there is no justification by Letophoro · · Score: 2

      Netflix is charged for internet access. The consumer is charged for internet access. The consumer is charged for netflix.

      So the ISPs are already burning the candle at both ends and the consumer gets burned twice. And that is in the best, most net-neutral of cases.

      There is no double-dipping in this case. Both sides are getting charged separately for access, which is fair. Consumers pay for Internet access. Netflix pays for their Internet access out of what customer of their service pay them for their service.

      They want to charge both the provider, and the consumer, again, for the nature of their use (above and beyond the bits for which they are both already paying).

      Maybe I wasn't clear enough, but that's what I was trying to say.

      Essentially, with NN, everyone got charged the same rate for the bits they used without consideration of what kind of data those bits were. Without NN, the ISPs will try to charge more for certain types of data. Or more accurately, they will charge you more to not degrade the delivery of those bits.