Tom Wheeler Resigns from the FCC
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She was very candid about the position of the FCC and the fact that she was finally able to speak her mind because this was going to be one of her last public appearances as a government official. One thing that stuck me was what she said about Tom[1]: "He actually believes that the consumer, the american people, are his clients. He's said that from the first day and he'll say that the day he leaves. Trust me, he doesn't like any of the companies [laughter]". The loss of the current administration of the FCC (including but not limited to Tom) will be a great loss for the American people in my opinion.
The conference was interesting and somewhat sad, because it was planned before the election and probably with the assumption that the new administration would not be totally hostile. Instead of the original direction of "here's what we've done and how we plan to carry these goals forward" it ended up being more of a retrospective on progress that had been made at the federal level that was about to be erased.
From the people I saw, there did not seem to be anyone there representing the new administration.
[1] https://youtu.be/O5drVTSpH5g?list=LLDlLvM2YAVFtSXvebIrlE0A&t...
When Wheeler was nominated, there were some concerns that he wouldn't even want to live up to the promises that Obama made.
That's a very different situation from being worried that the next chairman will live up to the promises that Trump has made.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/53260835850816716...
I wouldn't call it a promise, but it does make an anti NN argument.
I have a lot of respect for the man now, in fact.
Those are great things.
as a further stretch of the imagination... Fuck Video Bandwidth... why are we encouraging more Netflix with Net Neutrality? Do we really want more television?
Fuck codifying anything about Comcast's business into legal frameworks (laws/regulations/etc...)... let's do what humans have done for many many thousands of years, and communicate among ourselves, instead of through the king's network.
And, to be sure, Comcast is King. Well, money is... Or we wouldn't be worried about FCC chair change-over.
/rant
[ edit - thanks for the down votes ]
NN is largely independent of the type of content being sent over the network. NN helps Netflix because they're in competition with services that are owned by or partner with ISPs -- it doesn't, on the surface, seem to foster the creation of more streaming services.
Comcast was extremely anti-NN because they want to push cable and their own streaming services via network restrictions. I'm not sure what part of CC's business is begin codified into NN regulations or what nasty behavior it enables.
Do we really want more of one of the most vibrant artistic media right now?
Do we want them pushing new boundaries in the way they tell stories?
Do we want them bringing delight to more people - and more diverse groups who were previously ignored by network television?
Erm, yes.
I know it's fashionable amongst certain filter bubbles to be snippy about TV (and sometimes about all forms of entertainment), but actually, it's a pretty remarkable time for the artform.
Many of those of us who are in favour of art, stories, beauty, reflection of humanity in the mirror of fiction, all that stuff, do indeed want more of it.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/11/trump-will-have-n...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/12/15...
Any candidate put forth by the republicans will attempt to do so, yes. And in the meantime they have a 2-1 majority and will likely aim for it even before that happens.
What I've heard most often to describe it is "tiered network access". But preferably I don't want a term for it, because it shouldn't exist.
"That which shall not be named"?
In actuality it's a form of double-billing, of collecting from both the sender and receiver even though both they've both paid for access to the other already.
Or, soon enough, "the way the internet works today"
I do agree that we should wait and see when it comes to the new (FCC) administration, however.
He was extremely reasonable and very receptive to the needs of the tech community and small businesses. I came away from the meeting pleasantly surprised and have been happy with his actions during his tenure. Sad to see him go.
Meanwhile those opposed have been able to come up with analogies that while false and misleading, are easily understood.
What is the best way to explain the concept that can be quickly understood by those that are non-technical?
(This may actually no longer be a thing, storage heaters aren't used all that often anymore..)
I think things like net neutrality can have market solutions if we divorce the last mile operators (to become a utility) from customer ISPs, who merely operate a contract with various backbone networks to connect their clients to servers they want.
With last mile paid by taxes, ISPs are only dealing with the cost of backbone transit rates, where there is vibrant competition (and the market seems healthy). This competition to make a good transit deal (to get a cut from clients) is healthy as well, and is how much of the world operates. I think that switching off the US rent-seeking model to something like that would be a long-term solution to issues like net neutrality.
Change the incentives to change the behavior.
The real explanation is we should use the free market to solve our problems, and government for the portion where a market cant properly operate (ie, the last-mile netwotk).
The the access provider for both the copper and fibre network (right to the customer premises) is a regulated wholesale only provider, which is required to provide open access to its network on a non-discriminatory basis between all access seekers (retail telecommunications companies).[0]
This almost entirely resolves the net neutrality debate in New Zealand.
[0] This is a slight simplification: Chorus is the network owner for the copper network, and about 70% of the fibre network. The other 30% of fibre network is also built, owned and operated by wholesale only providers on a comparable basis.
The model does work pretty well.
I think we could do with a bit more government investment in infrastructure, because government is really the only entity that can drop a trillion dollars, then wait 40-50 years for its returns. (Well, them and pension funds, but neither has exactly shown great financial prudence lately.)
I just... Have a hard time articulating why infrastructure is important, because it's just so glaringly obvious from my perspective that it is. I mean, we see infrastructure everywhere in nature -- from the layout of bacteria mats to ant colonies. The idea that our society can be vibrant without having to perform those basic functions is absurd.
So it makes sense that the lives which depend on the services should control the final delivery network when it's not possible to deploy more than one or two -- eg, FTTH should be utility, cellphones should be a market; roads should be (largely) public, etc.
If the US's power is its people, then infrastructure is what allows us to maintain and focus that power.
Private doesn't even have to be a problem if competition is maintained. In Sweden there's a mix of public, privatized-minority-government-owned, co-op and private providers and competition is quite healthy.
But that's because Sweden has open carrier fiber network, while the wireless network is carrier specific.
Im not against regulation -- competition is what brings out the best in us, but games are only interesting if the rules are reasonable.
I completely agree with this.
> But couldn't a lot of that be addressed by requiring a certain number of different spectrum owners?
I suppose it could, but is that not the case in the US? I believe it only works if you can expect that cartels won't exist, which unfortunately is not a safe assumption. It's also an expensive barrier to entry for new actors.
Community owned last-mile utility is what has worked on electricity, phones, and forementioned fiber in Sweden. Anything else has proven to somehow fail to be competative. I feel comfortable in drawing an assumption off that. I wish more people agreed or that I was proven wrong.
Likewise games stop being fun if the rules can't enforce a reasonable playing ground.
The question then is how to best regulate the allocation of spectrum. Because cell networks are relatively easy to deploy (on top of an existing fiber network, and relative to the work of the fiber buildout), it seems to make more sense to break regions (city or county) up in to 10 or so spectrum slices, and lease them out to carriers. Regions are free to choose to have some or all of that operate as a utility, I suppose, but I think a regular co-op or corporation likely performs as well, as long as you require that fundamental carrier diversity.
Then just a bit of regulation about unlocked phones (when you pay in full!).
The last mile isn't some nationwide open carrier network like Australia's planned NBN. In some places there are municipal open access networks, in some places it's co-ops of homeowners, but in many places it's all private networks (in every apartment I lived in in Malmö, it was all private fiber - either Telia, Tele2, Ownit, etc). But even though it was private it was better than what you can get in most US cities.
We seem to have no problem letting the other natural monopolies like electricity, water, sanitation, education, mail, roads, bridges etc etc etc be run by the government as part of the commons. But we freak out when the government runs the internet because big brother.
I might suggest that the real issue is not the bits whizzing around but who is watching. Which would mean that net neutrality is a smokescreen. Fix privacy with free https everywhere (among other things) and people might just realize that they don't need to pay 30% more for advertising and dividends on what could otherwise be a commoditized utility like everything else.
Companies build private roads. To drive on those roads, they install a toll-booth at each entrance onto the road (like your house, office, warehouse, shops, etc) - every vehicle gets charged to enter the road network.
Large road companies usually come to some agreement that they'll join their roads at large intersections, but don't install toll-booths there, because it's good for each of them - after all, they still bill every car entering their road network, and better connections between road networks means more users of the road (and thus more revenue).
Usually when roads get congested, they make them wider, and where two road networks meet - each company pays to upgrade it's side of the road network.
This is how things have worked until recently.
Some road companies have decided that instead of upgrading their network, they'll make many of the lanes reserved for 'preferred road network users'.
Now, if you order from a store affiliated with the road company - things will work like they used to. But if you order from an unaffiliated store - that delivery will take much longer (or maybe not happen at all, if the road is too congested and the driver turns around and goes home)
Yeah, but isn't it in the private roads' owners benefit to reduce congestion, so they create HOV lanes? And what if they want to promote certain kinds of cars like electric and hybrid and therefore allow them to drive in the HOV lanes? Shouldn't they be allowed to?
Edit: Not that I necessarily agree, but this seems like a flaw in the analogy.
And the correct analogy for what they want to do is that the road company also owns a car company and is restricting the lanes you can use and charging higher tolls for not buying one of their cars, because they want to monopolize the car market.
It means Spotify doesn't count against your data allowance!
Less than 11 minutes.
It's fraud.
If instead you want the telecom natural monopolies to take more control of the Internet and change how it works to bias whoever can pay them more, then you're against Net Neutrality."
There hasn't been many largescale violations of it even when violations were legal.
Comcast blocking bittorrent is the only clearly bad example of a net neutrality violation I can think of. AT&T zero rating DirecTV streaming is the second but a lot of consumers see free and don't care.
Or:
"If you think that Comcast, Time Warner, and other internet providers should not control where you choose to go on the internet, then support Net Neutrality."
This is imperfect, obviously, but I think it gets close to the core issues fairly concisely.
Frankly, I, as a citizen, think you should be allowed to sell the pipe, what goes over the pipe, or what the consumer connects to the pipe, but only one of the three. I like that this has reasonably clear divisions and provides competing interests that keep the other parties in check.
Even more, how do we know that these telecom providers will only charge as much as is needed for the maintenance of the roads, and not just slap on more costs?
We can't even really blame the telecom companies for this, either, as they do have a responsibility to their shareholders to make as much money as possible, but in a monopolized market, as ISPs are in most cities in America, the government has to step in at some point to protect the consumer's interests.
Yes, because of competition or the threat of competition. This works for CPU vendors and toll roads; why shouldn't it work for internet service (which is rather fungible)?
> How many homes in America don't have access to Broadband internet? IN 2016?
I don't know; what are you trying to tell me? Are you saying it's too little or everyone has broadband internet?
> We can't even really blame the telecom companies for this, either, as they do have a responsibility to their shareholders to make as much money as possible, but in a monopolized market, as ISPs are in most cities in America, the government has to step in at some point to protect the consumer's interests.
Assuming a monopoly:
a) Wouldn't antitrust law work if the ISP tried to prioritize their own pages (like their streaming video services)?
b) If people wanted net neutrality the ISP would offer such a plan. But then you might say the ISP will price that too high. But why didn't they price normal non-neutral internet service too high then? The threat of competition forces them to price plans reasonably.
So, how BART works?
This seems like a good argument against NN. It makes me think that some traffic is much higher priority and should get special privileges.
Discriminating based on the type of traffic is arguably a good thing so long as it's done in good faith. Real time connections like VOIP and streaming ought to get higher priority.
It's the destination that really matters. Since UPS owns the roads and partners with Amazon, shipments from Jet.com are limited to 15mph while trucks carrying Amazon packages can go 60mph.
Or if you want something that's more like actual shipping a better example might be only UPS is allowed to deliver packages on the roads they own (like last mile ISPs), and because of their partnership with Amazon, only packages from them can have next-day shipping.
The only internet path to Comcast ISP customers is through Comcast. Comcast shouldn't be allowed to use that monopoly to destroy their competitors in other markets like TV.
As in, they can regulate all they want, but then they're legally liable for everything on their networks. So if a kiddie porn packet goes over it, they're complicit by virtue of not regulating it.
Obviously, I'd prefer net neutrality but I've never understood why that threat doesn't have teeth.
I also have never understood why, if a utility has right of way on my property, I don't have say over things like net neutrality. It seems like if they don't want net neutrality, I should arbitrarily be able to price the cost of them using my property, as well as damages from any removal. It's not like they don't make use of public lands.
... or the arguments against municipal broadband...
... or why ISPs are not subject to antitrust statutes...
"Get Facebook, Twitter, and Google for just $9.99/mo!"
"Add on the video package and get Netflix and Hulu for only $24.99/mo more!"
"News junkie? Get BBC, NY Times, CNN for $7.99/mo."
The reality is of course much more nuanced than that (what's more likely is we'll see these sites being offered bandwidth cap exemptions and faster loading; not outright blocks if you don't pay up), but it conveys the message in a easy-to-digest fashion for the lay person. They're used to this already with their cable packages.
Example: http://i.imgur.com/rL33yEm.jpg
Keep in mind, Wikipedia benefits from non-neutral networks in some developing countries where Wikipedia doesn't count towards the bandwidth cap.
It's a pretty complicated world.
Wikipedia is only on offer for (disingenous) good will.
This puts say, Hacker News, in a very bad position.
As well as any new startup that wants to compete against the major players with billions of dollars.
Already there are people strong-armed into AT&T's DirecTV Now, which is zero-rated on AT&T's wireless network. With the pitiful bandwidth caps on mobile data, how can Netflix possibly compete with that?
It's coming too, because it is a great deal for ISPs (more money! Huge kickbacks for the senior management!), and a great deal for megacorp incumbent media companies who don't have to worry about any of those pesky upstarts screwing up their monopolistic business models. No more Netflix like services appearing and eating your lunch, you can effectively cut them off at the ISP.
"If Burger King pays someone to enable me to get there faster, then that's cool!"
(devil's advocate)
But now the reply could be:
"The customer is free to choose a different road company. And the road company is free to choose its business model. The free market will decide which road company offers the best price/performance ratio in the end."
(again, devil's advocate)
Adam Smith, the father of free market economics, was very clear about this. Markets must be well regulated in order to remain free and fair.
[1] Racketeering, often associated with organized crime, is the act of offering of a dishonest service (a "racket") to solve a problem that wouldn't otherwise exist without the enterprise offering the service.
I was thinking "What if gas stations could charge you based in the car you drove, and asked car companies to pay these 'fees'?"
Police: Sir, do you know what speed you were going?
Driver: Yes, my wife is in the back and she's about to go into labor.
Police: Let me turn on my lights and escort you to the hospital!
Water is a finite, possibly scarce resource, and there are shortages in places in the US. If I lived in one of those places, I would sure as hell want some asshole filling his pool during a shortage to pay more than the rest of us pay for basic drinking water. Similarly, I would want companies that bottle that water up and sell it at a premium to pay more than everyone else.
Municipalities already limit outdoor water usage for exactly this reason. You can drink all the water you want but you can only use it outside to water your grass or fill your pool on odd or even days. Your analogy is saying that shouldn't be allowed, because internet.
It doesn't cost anything more to use it at maximum capacity than it does to just leave it on standby. (The end points MIGHT use a TINY bit more power, but we're talking on the order of cents per month for terrabytes/month of traffic; it's a rounding error.)
The ISPs already offer and charge accordingly for home, business and commercial accounts(all pay more for more volume & speed).
With net neutrality, all websites you visit are equally fast and equally accessible. Without it, someone else is allowed to choose for you which ones are fast, and which ones are accessible. As a consumer of a web without net neutrality, you lose some ability to choose, and you may lose some access. It is fundamentally about the freedom to choose, not about payments or bandwidth numbers, but choice.
As many of us are burgeoning web site creators and entrepreneurs, lack of net neutrality gives advantages to existing businesses who have more money than their competitors. It allows bigger sites to drive traffic to them and away from competition. This will make it harder, not easier, to start new businesses that rely on internet traffic.
We don't need rules to enforce a neutral internet if we create a traffic system where 3rd parties can't see your destination before you get there. We don't need to have a debate or try to explain the reasons at all if we use better encryption and routing protocols.
This is all technically doable, I just feel like we haven't allowed privacy to be a high enough priority, and we won't really get net neutrality until we decide to make privacy more important than giving ISPs and government the ability to look at everything we do online.
"What if your mail carrier had sole power to decide how quickly (or if at all) you got your mail?"
It's probably not a particularly accessible analogy for most of us here, but it's easily relatable across generations without getting bogged down in technical details.
Your electric bill.
Should your electric company be allowed to charge you or the manufacturer of <insert favorite device> more money to power <insert favorite device>?
The summary is that within 60 legislative session days of a regulation being issued Congress can go through an expedited process (in particular, not filibusterable) to pass legislation that blocks the rule from going into effect. The catch is that the legislation still needs to be signed by the president, or you have to override the veto. But if you get a new president before the 60 legislative session days are up...
http://www.libertylawsite.org/2016/11/17/midnight-mulligan-t... has some analysis of how that might play out in this case.
Live by the sword, die by the sword ...
It's four more years of the same just with slightly different players and the Democrats already know what to do.
I agree that the Democrats made their bed on that one, but they were at least holding hearings for most of Bush's senior nominees rather than trying to obstruct all his appointments. The refusal to even hear a supreme Court nominee this year shocked me. It would be understandable if Scalia had died close to the election but his seat has been empty for nearly a year now.
Priscilla Owen was denied a vote for an entire presidential term[1].
[1] - http://www.frontpagemag.com/point/261878/democrats-blocked-b...
Priscilla Owen was retribution because the Republican senate refused to fill Garwood's seat during Clinton's second term (obstruction that lasted just as long as Owens, 97-01) and she was viewed as too conservative (contrary to what the the Frontpage Mag article says). They're not even in the same ballpark.
We should expect better from everyone, not just shrug and say "well, they started it."
Really people wonder why politician sometimes fight for nonsensical minor tweaks that look like a waste a taxpayer money, but that's exactly it. Most of the government way of working is ruled by tradition rather than law and new laws are created in case of abuse.
After a few cycle of those little games affecting both big parties, they will most likely get tired of it and vote a law that prevent that to ever happen again.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_option#Events_of_Novem...
http://factmyth.com/factoids/democrats-and-republicans-switc...
http://www.livescience.com/34241-democratic-republican-parti...
https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-Democrats-used-to-be-t...
On the flip side, I expect to see a lot of the reverse as well with large numbers of Democrats refusing to act on or otherwise stalling legislation as retribution for how Republicans have acted the past few years. We're in for a fun ride.
Now all this sounds very fine and idealist, but for lawmaking to be valid and have credibility then there needs to be some sort of formality to the process so that the citizenry can find out what their elected representatives are actually doing on their behalf, eg by consulting the Congressional record. Of course much of what happens in the legislative chamber is theatrical most deals are negotiated and brokered behind closed doors, but the lack of accountability that inheres in such arrangements is why there is a requirement for formalities in the first place.
So because there are formal rules on how laws are made, whether Congress is in session or not does matter. When it's only being kept in session by a technicality without any actual legislative work being performed, that says to everyone looking that the party engaging in such behavior regards rules as an obstruction to be got around rather than a standard for governing their own behavior, and that attitude is likely to promulgate itself among the population in various ways.
If you think recess appointments are a silly anachronism, amend the constitution. Unfortunately, I feel there's a particular faction in the country that actively aims at the undoing of the union in favor of a weak federation of states or several regional confederacies. That would not be so bad if the USA were its own planet, but as it's an imperial-scale power sharing the world with several rivals and many smaller national and corporate actors, a deconstruction of the federal system will create all sorts of power vacuums, and you know how that turns out.
The ordinary power of appointment is confined to the President and Senate JOINTLY, and can therefore only be exercised during the session of the Senate; but as it would have been improper to oblige this body to be continually in session for the appointment of officers and as vacancies might happen IN THEIR RECESS, which it might be necessary for the public service to fill without delay, the succeeding clause is evidently intended to authorize the President, SINGLY, to make temporary appointments "during the recess of the Senate, by granting commissions which shall expire at the end of their next session."
Given the joint nature of appointments, and that the legislature is a co-equal branch of government, it seems reasonable that if the Senate would prefer to remain permanently in session so as not to diminish its authority, it's within its right to do so. And that an executive trying to make a recess appointment in this case is exactly the sort of "regard[ing] rules as an obstruction to be got around" that you seem to be railing against.
A recess appointment seems fair here to me. It's not the rules that the president would be working around, it's a failure of congress to act.
Both sides are supposed to have power here. Ideally if either side refuses to do their job for long enough, the other one should be able to install a temporary appointee.
it seems reasonable that if the Senate would prefer to remain permanently in session so as not to diminish its authority, it's within its right to do so
Legally yes, politically no. There's no quorum so it's not possible to transact any legislative business and everyone knows this. That gap between the procedural state and reality delegitimizes the procedure through its self-evident falsity.
If the public perceives the government to be a sham, why keep obeying it? I suggest to you that the emergent political reality is that the constitution is becoming a dead letter and that the Declaration of Independence more closely mirrors national sentiment.
Edit: it's also worth noting that serving in the Senate was originally a part-time occupation; recesses of several months were common until the 1930s. That's a very different case than in 2016, where the longest break was five weeks.
This is off-topic, but I don't think that the number of people who genuinely want to do what you describe is effectively none. I suspect that you're actually referring to people who want the government of the United States and the governments of the several states to actually obey the federal and state constitutions. They (and — full disclosure — I) would argue that things for which there's no constitutional provision (e.g. drug prohibition) simply shouldn't exist, or amendments should be passed to permit them.
They won't fill up the spot until the next administration.
There's a few independent commissions like the FCC where the members are meant to have a partisan split with the party that controls the White House has the majority. To make that work, the tradition is that the chairman steps down when the White House changes hands.
Kevin Martin (R) resigned on January 19th 2009 to allow Obama to select a chairman; William Kennard (D) resigned on January 19, 2001 to allow Bush to select a chairman; Alfred C. Sikes (R) resigned on January 19, 1993 to allow Clinton to select a chairman, etc.
This has actually been a matter of contention this year; back in March Wheeler was asked by the Senate Commerce Commission if he would follow the tradition and refused to commit, which raised a number of eyebrows. Apparently he thought better of it (or was just having fun keeping people guessing).
> opens up a spot for Obama or Trump to fill.
No, as per normal his resignation is effective on inauguration. The entire point is to let the incoming president fill the spot.
Hang in there, guys..
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Let's hope it never gets that bad.
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Sometimes working in technology feels like working stage crew -- the audience doesn't give a crap about your existence until you screw up.
I don't know about five years. But in 25 I don't know if you'll be able to differentiate your computer from your (old, dumb) TV, except you'll have fewer rights
The early Internet functioned on a gentleman's handshake - you send traffic onto my network, I send traffic onto your network, over time the balance will mostly net out. The system operated on the presumption that everyone's traffic increased more or less in parallel over time and so everybody's infrastructure would be upgraded in parallel.
The problem is that Netflix now makes up a 37% share of all internet traffic. The traditional way you do that is a CDN, and Netflix used to do that. But in 2012 Netflix decided to save money by shifting away from CDNs into their own datacenters and purchase up all the transit capacity they could. Basically, become their own ISP that took advantage of the gentleman's agreement (because nobody wants to send any significant volume of traffic to Netflix, they have almost no infrastructure costs of their own, so the inherent detente of traffic volume falls apart).
http://qz.com/256586/the-inside-story-of-how-netflix-came-to...
The solution for Netflix was always clear, you either pay peering fees, you pay for a CDN who pays peering fees, or you pay to colocate servers with Comcast so there's no peering involved. The problem is that Netflix doesn't want to pay for their infrastructure. The rules on infrastructure costs for residential players are never, never the same as the rules for industrial users. The fact that you paid for a driveway doesn't mean that you will never have to pay a toll, and heavy users will actually have to pay to remediate the damage to local roads/etc caused by their heavy traffic (used in some states/localities where trucks carrying fracking fluid beat up the roads). Analogously - if you make up 1/3 of all internet traffic and are still growing rapidly, you are going to have to expect to pay for some extra infrastructure along the path your data take, even if it's technically outside the boundary of your datacenter.
An analogous real-world "gentleman's agreement" is the postal delivery system (actually it's formalized in the Universal Postal Union treaty). When you mail a package to Germany, the German post office gets paid almost nothing, they essentially deliver that package at a loss. And the same applies when a German mails a package to the US. The assumption is that this roughly nets out. Then you get someone like China who comes along and subsidizes postage as an easy way to boost exports and help their economy, and suddenly things no longer net out. The US government, as the "last mile" provider here, eventually had to file a WTO suit to get them to stop dumping.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/china-halts-export-subsidy-progr...
So no, nothing to see here, what Netflix is doing is not part of Net Neutrality, it's a cheap attempt to glom onto the movement to subsidize their infrastructure costs. The same predatory tactics are roundly rebuffed when they're done with other "neutral networks" like the post, and it's been rightly rebuffed with Netflix too. Comcast never shaped any traffic or refused to allow any customers access - they just didn't upgrade their infrastructure to the level Netflix wanted them to until Netflix paid for it, and those links were congested.
I hate having to defend Comcast because they are a shit company with shit customer service, but if you are dropping mass volumes of data onto the network to the extent that infrastructure upgrades are necessary (again: 37% of all internet traffic is Netflix) then yeah, you get to pay for them. Otherwise it's just pushing your Netflix bill onto my internet bill.
The next commissioner will probably by worse for consumers based on the historical sentiment of previous commissioners, is what you probably meant.
While I absolutely agree, we have no idea what the future holds.
It would be a pity if all that effort will be dismantled by corrupted commissioners backed by monopolists who hate competition and progress.
(Meanwhile, Michael Powell made the opposite move: He's currently in charge of the cable industry group.)