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Ajit Pai's FCC Can't Admit Broadband Competition Is a Problem (dslreports.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from DSLReports: While the FCC is fortunately backing away from a plan that would have weakened the standard definition of broadband, the agency under Ajit Pai still can't seem to acknowledge the lack of competition in the broadband sector. Or the impact this limited competition has in encouraging higher prices, net neutrality violations, privacy violations, or what's widely agreed to be some of the worst customer service of any industry in America. The Trump FCC had been widely criticized for a plan to weaken the standard definition of broadband from 25 Mbps down, 3 Mbps up, to include any wireless connection capable of 10 Mbps down, 1 Mbps up. Consumer advocates argued the move was a ham-fisted attempt to try and tilt the data to downplay the industry's obvious competitive and coverage shortcomings. They also argued that the plan made no coherent sense, given that wireless broadband is frequently capped, often not available (with carrier maps the FCC relies on falsely over-stating coverage), and significantly more expensive than traditional fixed-line service.
In a statement (pdf), FCC boss Ajit Pai stated the agency would fortunately be backing away from the measure, while acknowledging that frequently capped and expensive wireless isn't a comparable replacement for fixed-line broadband. "The draft report maintains the same benchmark speed for fixed broadband service previously adopted by the Commission: 25 Mbps download/3 Mbps upload," stated Pai. "The draft report also concludes that mobile broadband service is not a full substitute for fixed service. Instead, it notes there are differences between the two technologies, including clear variations in consumer preferences and demands." That's the good news. The bad news: the FCC under Pai's leadership continues to downplay and ignore the lack of competition in the sector, and the high prices and various bad behaviors most people are painfully familiar with.
In a statement (pdf), FCC boss Ajit Pai stated the agency would fortunately be backing away from the measure, while acknowledging that frequently capped and expensive wireless isn't a comparable replacement for fixed-line broadband. "The draft report maintains the same benchmark speed for fixed broadband service previously adopted by the Commission: 25 Mbps download/3 Mbps upload," stated Pai. "The draft report also concludes that mobile broadband service is not a full substitute for fixed service. Instead, it notes there are differences between the two technologies, including clear variations in consumer preferences and demands." That's the good news. The bad news: the FCC under Pai's leadership continues to downplay and ignore the lack of competition in the sector, and the high prices and various bad behaviors most people are painfully familiar with.
It's all the collusion that is a problem.
Ajit Pai couldn't admit his ass was on fire even he smelt smoke.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
Ajit Pai is an industry shill. He will not admit to anything that is not in the interest of his industry masters.
Why is this so hard to understand ?
And they're doing everything in their power (and beyond) to stamp out such competition.
Demanding broadband competition is like demanding competition for electricity or city water. It's not feasible. The people who whine constantly about lack of competition obviously don't understand simple economics.
And they're doing everything in their power (and beyond) to stamp out such competition.
Assuming Ajit is actually trying to do his job, then he might be assuming that removing rules will magically make broadband more lucrative, which might increase competition, particularly in under served areas.
Of course he could just be a complete moron. Who knows? Either way, somehow I doubt encouraging corruption will end well unless your one of the new kings of the mini kingdoms I guess...
I'd actually like to see tax benefits for towns that implement high quality broadband for reasonable prices... Well the tax benefit would have to be for the homeowners, but anyway.
In short give incentive to the creation of broadband by those that are not directly trying to take advantage of their customers. While the town is at it they can provide multicast/broadcast copies of all the local television channels on the fiber...
NN would not give us more ISPs. It would not have a diversity of companies laying cable.
And absent more choices in who are our ISPs are from the wire up level... it is pointless.
To solve the problem we need Right of Way for poles and conduits. Absent that, this is just monopolists arguing for their monopoly.
The corporate monopolists want to be the only people that are allowed to run cable in the last mile and the socialist monopolists merely want the government to monopolize it.
The only non-monopolist option is Right of Way to poles and conduits.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
This new plan makes perfect sense if you're trying to obfucate records of new spending in infrastructure to show Net Neutrality shortcomings. Just another obviously corrupt plan from an obviously corrupt official... Azzhat Piehole.
"Computers are a lot like Air Conditioners" "They both work great until you start opening Windows"
it's because the Republicans can't afford to piss off rural voters. The US system of government gives them a disproportionate amount of voting power and their interests don't often align with the city voters, making them a prime candidate for politicking.
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Do we care what this guy thinks? I mean, until we get our own shit together, we're just on the same decline that started when Kennedy died, right? So fuck it. In November, if we don't clean out all the incumbents from the house, it will just be the same old shit all over again. It's up to you. The choice is yours.
Posting AC, but you know who I am, and if you don't, it's because you're a dumbass.
There are places where it is possible to choose from many gas companies and where all ISPs share the same wires.
The statehouse politicians don't serve my interests either. And the local politicians have to be browbeaten to fix potholes, let alone address problems with national scope.
Funny, Comcast has upgraded my speed *twice* in the past month, after 2+ years of mostly the same connection. They wouldn't be doing that if they weren't afraid to lose me as a customer. It makes me wonder who else started offering service in my area. Competition is the only way capitalism can even *approach* sane. Forcing ISPs to compete results in a healthier market where (potential) customers have more choice and aren't locked into providers via physical location.
There is a saying in India - "You can take a corrupt Indian out of the corruption in India, but you cannot take out the corruption out of him." That said, not every Indian is corrupt, but the ones that are have it as a genetic disease.
And yet, Charter / Spectrum decided it would be a good idea to raise my bandwidth to 230 mbit/sec and charge me less than I was paying for 60 mbit.
Maybe they understand simple economics better than you think. A regional telco has been rolling fiber here, and it's got the cable company improving service without increasing price... sounds like competition might actually be a thing, and may actually be paying off for the subscribers.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
My cable bill keeps going up and I have no other choice. Maybe they don't understand economics as well as you think.
FU
You deserve to be shot. And I ain't no fckn Lib, little brownshirt.
The current standard for 'broadband' is 4/1 right now.
NOT 25/3.
So you're lying right off...
And the competition problem has nothing to do with that or the fcc at all anyway.
It has to do with your local cities and state utility boards granting a monopoly to a company.
The FCC is irrevelant to that.
Stop asking me to support your fucking lies and misleading incorrect bullshit. It's old now. Fuckoff and die m'kay?
It's lack of competition that's a problem like here in Seattle with the government-granted monopolies between Wave and Comcast.
Some areas have competition, some areas do not... Compare the service between those areas.
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Either you are in favor of Network Neutrality
OR
You are one of the choices below:
1) Really stupid. Just incredibly dumb
2) A corporate shill for the ISPs
3) Some kind of jackbooted thug- aka far right Nazi.
End.
Of.
Story.
AC then run for local political office. Do a great job and run again for city and state level.
Allow locals to do community broadband and design the networks needed. No more federal NN monopoly rules to hold back community broadband in a city, state.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
and he was promoted by Trump....
As much as I don't like Trump, this is not strictly Trump's FCC...
There are places where it is possible to choose from many gas companies and where all ISPs share the same wires.
And pigs fly among the unicorns.
What a fucking idiot.
Sure they do. Someone has to subsidise Fredâs improves service. Thanks, AC!
10x1 is a reasonable transition from the previous definition of broadband which was 4Mb download x 1Mb upload at the time the 25x3 definition was made. At this point I don't think it really matters since it is just as an impossible goal.
Sure you can tell everyone overnight that broadband is 25Mb down x 3Mb up but who again is going to be able to provide that in the middle of nowhere USA? You're not just going to dig an internet well and be done with it. Certainly is not going to happen over the existing aging copper infrastructure or with reasonable data caps over satellite.
I am employed at a wisp and it is hard enough to get people 2-6Mb for several hundred households yet alone what it would take to increase that capacity 6x without insane investment (ie: work for free). It is a shame the big cell companies are being allowed to eat all the wireless spectrum that would allow us smaller companies to make your experience at home soo much better.
Oh, and everyone that says they "work from home"... we know you are mostly using it for streaming so might as well be honest about it ;p
P.S. There are 8 bits in a byte and no you're never going to understand that nor care about it.
You are making a mistake about hiding your underwear from your parents. Coming out is all about honesty. You've lived a lie for long enough. Now is the time to "man up" and show your parents who you really are. Show them your ladies underwear, and be proud of who you are. It is all about pride, is it not?
Too bad your temporary discount doesn't reflect actual competition. Every consolidation of ISPs results in their creating a patchwork of non-competition. The isps are actually more in coordination on availability with each other than they are with you.
Allow locals to do community broadband and design the networks needed.
What does that have to do with NN?
No more federal NN monopoly rules to hold back community broadband in a city, state.
NN does not restrict community broadband efforts. It restricts what the big players can do with traffic. And that just might include what the big players do with traffic that passes through, oh say, community broadband efforts.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
By definition, the majority of Americans isn't "a few elite":
https://xkcd.com/1939/
Trump isn't Command in Chief, more Usurper in Chief, he's not even a Republican, and barely loyal to USA
Is rule saying the last mile is a public right.
1. Can't be AC while being a politician.
2. No. Building a life long legacy to get a stab at the problem will not happen in time. Bad solution.
is a fucking weasel for Verizon. What did you expect?
You would discover if you explored history, that the people who advocating shooting for ideological reasons have generally been the brownshirts.
The problem with ISPs is a state and local one. That is where the bottle neck of regulations granting monopolies is causing all the problems. The worst are HOAs and apartments. They flat out sell you out for a check from the ISPs to grant them.a monopoly.
Odd that it took the threat of competition to get better service.
Meanwhile Spectrum just increased my cost by $10/ month with no benefit and in the evenings the bandwidth is shit. My only other choice is frontier dsl.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
I live in the UK. I have 75/15M ADSL broadband from British Telecom. I also have a choice of 6 or 7 other providers in my area with offerings ranging from budget 15/3 to "luxury" 100/25 (or better) from one of the cable providers. At least 2 can do Fibre to my home, and most now have fibre to the street cabinet.
There are areas of the country with little or no competition, but they are getting smaller, and we now have a number of co-op groups doing DIY systems in rural areas. Mesh networks with microwave links for the backhaul are now a thing, with multiple suppliers of kits of hardware plus advice. In at least two rural areas in England, groups of farmers got together to set-up microwave links and lay fibre themselves!
How come the USA, the home of the "Free market" has nor real competition in the telecoms field? Too many lawyers? Dumb legislators? All of the above?
This is an engineering problem at it's core. Right now, you have cable and DSL. Both are physical infrastructures and both need to secure rights of way. Until you remove that physical limitation, you're not going to get a bunch of ISPs willing to pony up the cash to not just buy and install all the equipment but to pay fees for the rights of way.
The solution is long range mesh wireless. Note that wifi exploded onto the market because it operated in the unlicensed (translation: unregulated or free of charge) frequency ranges.
I have......one option for wireline broadband where I live...Comcast and Verizon. I have to get Verizon because they are the only ones willing to run lines back to my house. Comcast says my house is "too far from the road" and outright refuses to connect me unless *I* foot the bill for it.
this "internet speed problem" could totally be solved if we could mate broadcast TV w/ internet:
ALL the crappy ads and flash and bullcrap comes over the air to everyone at the same time and gets rendered
onto the page.
all the other stuff, like the real important stuff comes over a 1 Mbps DSL line.
the html should be fairly easy: insert ad @ time 9.01 pm from source TV-antenna.
this way a website downloaded would weigh in at a few KB and all the rendered crap in the MB range would be over-the-air. :]
Pai repealed NN because it is anti-competitive.
Forcing everyone to provide the same good/service and preventing them from competing on price based around what good/service they provide is plainly anti-competitive.
Now, all of a sudden, the same people who attacked Pai for ALLOWING COMPETITION are critizing him for this.
According to his video, you can still be a good little consumer.
L'Idiot
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
It's not a problem.
Innovation is the solution.
That's why they repealed "net neutrality" which was just a trojan for regulating it like your power and landline telephone. Don't know anyone who's happy about those.
BTW getting over 150MB/sec download on my T-Mobile phone. Who needs wires?
But because electricity and water are natural monopolies, they are also regulated utilities. The FCC just threw out any sort of regulation of these ISPs. Either give us a competitive ISP market or regulate the shit out of them.
Ajit Pai is a cunt.
Don't show your ignorance - such places do exist. I know, because I live in one of them. I can choose among electricity providers, gas providers, phone providers and internet providers without having to change the wires or pipes.
You're a fucking idiot if you think Obama has anything to do with the dismal state of Internet access in America.
The problem is lack of competition in too many markets, driven partly by "natural monopoly" effects and partly by regulations that raise the barriers to entry in the ISP market.