Slashdot Mirror
FCC Report Claims Broken Broadband Market Has Been Fixed By Killing Net Neutrality (vice.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: The FCC has released a new report falsely claiming that the agency's attack on net neutrality is already paying huge dividends when it comes to sector investment and competition. Unfortunately for the FCC, the data the agency is relying on to "prove" this claim comes from before current FCC boss Ajit Pai even took office and doesn't remotely support that conclusion. The Trump FCC's latest broadband deployment report [concludes] that "advanced telecommunications capability is being deployed to all Americans in a reasonable and timely fashion." That claim comes despite the fact that this same data also shows that two thirds of U.S. homes lack access to 25 Mbps broadband from more than one ISP, resulting in numerous broadband monopolies in markets nationwide.
An accompanying press release goes on to claim that "steps taken last year have restored progress by removing barriers to infrastructure investment, promoting competition, and restoring the longstanding bipartisan light-touch regulatory framework for broadband that had been reversed by the Title II Order." The FCC has repeatedly tried to claim that the FCC's 2015 net neutrality rules devastated sector investment -- despite the fact this is easily disproved by ISP earnings reports, SEC filings, and numerous CEO statements to investors. That hasn't stopped this FCC from repeating this claim anyway, apparently hoping that repetition forges reality. "The problem: these deployments aren't new, and industry watchers note that they all technically began under the oversight of the previous FCC," Motherboard concludes. "All of the examples provided by the agency cite deployments that predominantly occurred in 2017 as the result of obligations attached to mergers or subsidies under the previous Tom Wheeler-run FCC."
An accompanying press release goes on to claim that "steps taken last year have restored progress by removing barriers to infrastructure investment, promoting competition, and restoring the longstanding bipartisan light-touch regulatory framework for broadband that had been reversed by the Title II Order." The FCC has repeatedly tried to claim that the FCC's 2015 net neutrality rules devastated sector investment -- despite the fact this is easily disproved by ISP earnings reports, SEC filings, and numerous CEO statements to investors. That hasn't stopped this FCC from repeating this claim anyway, apparently hoping that repetition forges reality. "The problem: these deployments aren't new, and industry watchers note that they all technically began under the oversight of the previous FCC," Motherboard concludes. "All of the examples provided by the agency cite deployments that predominantly occurred in 2017 as the result of obligations attached to mergers or subsidies under the previous Tom Wheeler-run FCC."
... the people in rural areas who are most negatively impacted by the lack of readily available broadband will fall for this.
Big Brother has increased broadband speeds from 25 mbps to 10 mbps! Hooray Big Brother!
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
right? Show up for your primaries folks. Otherwise you'll have the same choice of Right wing corporate Dems and right wing Rs. Also, and I know this isn't a popular idea, but this _is_ a partisan issue. The Republicans are opposed to government regulation and want to leave the free market to decide (massive subsidies not withstanding) while the Ds, when they're not being actively bought off (again, show up at your primaries people) support government regulation with the aim of general societal improvements + correcting imbalances in the market. What I'm saying is, if you vote R you shouldn't be surprised when they don't want to regulate. They told you that in their party platform.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
You don't need 25 Mbps, so nobody else does?
Even if that were so, how does that change Pai cherry-picking statistics from 2016 to somehow claim repealing NN in 2017 (which hasn't even taken affect yet) magically "fixed" the broadband industry? How does that change Pai claiming infrastructure investments ISPs announced years ago were somehow magically caused by him repealing NN years later?
>> falsely claiming that the agency's attack on net neutrality is already paying huge dividends
It probably really is already paying huge dividends, just exclusively to the board and shareholders, not the customers.
Ahuxley.
You have it wrong.
The isps (small or large) did not have to "prove" that they are supporting neutrality in their infrastructure. They simply have to not get caught violating it.
Network neutrality is less expensive as far as infrastructure and labor cost is concerned.
Implementing "fast lanes" is really the opposite- it is done by adding equipment (and the labor cost of implementing and maintenance) to RESTRICT bandwidth for slower, cheaper access.
And the loss of profit for NOT using that expensive, new equipment to slow down traffic for content providers and consumers.