He makes some really good points and generally comes across as well-informed and well-intentioned. In this climate of crazy media hype it's good to keep an open mind and listen to the actual people working on policy.
He talks about the "light touch" framework of the Bill Clinton era, which saw telecos profit immensely and never feed any money back into their system. I've know Comcast line who, back in the early 2000s, would tell me they'd take parts to their shop where people would resolder and reconstruct equipment that no one in the world manufactured anymore instead of just upgrading the lines.
Comcast sued the Electric Power Board in TN a few years later to keep them from offering Fibre to the home; a service that provided amazing speed at about the exact same cost.
He brings up AOL CDs versus Gigabit fibre, not talking about all the companies that are keeping that from happening.
There is still a bunch of dark fibre that hasn't been used. Telecos are still charging insane amounts for mobile bandwidth that's nowhere near saturated.
None of this stuff even touches network neutrality, which is simply saying "You pay for x quality of service and you get x quality of service, to everyone. We don't add a faster pipe just for Google. We don't throttle Netflix and give priority to YouTube. We won't throttle VoIP so you buy our VoIP service instead. Equal access, to the best of ability and equipment."
Even if he says Title II isn't the right framework, why gut it until it's replaced. If you say "we'll get rid of it and replace it," more likely than not they'll just git rid of it and telecos will do the same bullshit they've always done and run with it.
I think he's in the pocket of big teleco and is weaselling around giving them more power.
Even in the 1990s it was obvious that the copper network was obsolete and any additional money put into it would be a wasted investment.
> Comcast sued the Electric Power Board in TN a few years later to keep them from offering Fibre to the home
Chairman Pai specifically speaks about FCC initiatives to increase competition including opening up access to utility poles. It's a difficult issue because many utility poles/corridors are locally or municipally owned and the FCC has no jurisdiction there.
> Even if he says Title II isn't the right framework, why gut it until it's replaced.
The point is that it doesn't need to be replaced. It's a heavy-handed and unnecessary imposition of federal regulation on a market that needs to be as free and open as possible due to the speed of innovation in the tech space.
I'd be all for the "free and open" solution if we take it to its logical conclusion - that means franchise agreements, single-provider-multi-dwelling building agreements, and so on all become null and void at the same time.
This is nonsense. Because of the capital investment involved there are few "startups" in the ISP space. If there's technological innovation happening it's not filtering down to the consumer in the form of lower prices.
Here in Canada the effective price of LTE access per GB has continuously gone up in the face of "innovation" on how to structure billing for optimal revenue generation. Meanwhile Canadian ISPs fight any regulation that would help foreign entrants into the space with tooth and nail.
I'm generally amenable to the argument that robust competition is the best solution and that we should be aiming to reduce those barriers but... unbundling was very unpopular with the ISPs and didn't really work and is dead, and as you said the big last-mile problems are local.
Knowing that the FCC isn't actually successfully creating the robust competitive local broadband markets they say they'd prefer, doesn't it make sense for them to do what they _are_ able to do and keep the existing (already "light touch") regulations?
He says contradictory things. He says he supports an idea but doesn't support the act of enforcing it. His apparent ideology is in direct conflict with his actions. He either fundamentally misunderstands the situation, is majorly corrupt, or is simply malicious (which I doubt).
I support the idea of being faithful in your marriage, but I'm 100% opposed to the federal government enforcing this. How is that contradictory?
The problem is, there isn't another place for the regulation to happen. The FTC simply does not have the expertise or resources and the internet needs broad conforming rules to perform well, so a state-by-state solution would prove disastrous.
When you give a private entity the right to trample on individual rights, the individual's rights are weakened.
>Net neutrality, if it means a free and open internet, is something that everybody agrees upon,
Meanwhile, in the Ars article, we have a sponsoring Senator who hates Obamacare saying:
>In the announcement, Cruz repeated his charge that net neutrality is "Obamacare for the Internet."
So not sure what you're trying to do other than misinform us.
Up until the mid 80s, telcos would only allow devices that they had approved to be connected to their networks. That's why you had acoustic coupler modems until then. The device that made an actual, electrical connection to the phone company's network had to be one of their approved phones. They maxed out at 1200 baud (most of the time much lower ~100baud).
Then with the breakup of the bells, and subsequent regulation forcing them to open their networks and allow unapproved devices as long as they didn't have a demonstrated adverse effect on the network.
So yeah, the FCC wasn't regulating AOL in the 90s, they were regulating the last mile: the Bells, GTE, etc. That's where the value in government regulation is, and that's where we want it now as well.
My ideal situation, IMHO, would be nationalized last mile, with a host of choices of companies handling the peering from the local office to the internet. You then pay the peering company, and they pay rent to the gov for the last mile. By reducing the barrier to entry (by making it so that any company can easily attach to last mile fiber) you increase competition. That's unlikely to in the current political climate however (to say the least).
There were three basic reasons for the super-fast growth of internet in the 90s, which I remember quite well as I was making a good living selling computers and networking services.
1. It got way easier to use. When I first got onto the internet it was (almost) all text-based and unix-like, and conceptually difficult for many people to get to grips with, until someone invented a thing called a 'web browser' that regular people could figure out more easily.
2. No taxes on internet business, which had nothing to do with net neutrality but led to a stampede of people looking to make a quick buck and keep more of it than they would in other lines of business.
3. there was huge market potential because lots of people in developed countries had enough disposable income to own a computer, and modems were relatively affordable. Lots of people were doing peer-to-peer networking or running bulletin boards. If you wanted to start an internet company int eh 1990s all you needed was enough capital to rent a T1 line and a buy a or lease some network switching equipment (which was also becoming suddenly affordable with the growth of ethernet), and people would use your service because there weren't that many services out there.
I wrote a book for consumers on how to use the exciting new world of the internet back in 1995. Sadly it's long out of print but you can buy my copy for a mere $1000 and educate yourself on what things were actually like >20 years ago instead of your ideological imaginings.
But, despite all this searching, I have yet to find a meaningful argument in opposition. They are either vague or filled with misassumptions. I have yet to find someone (with a correct understanding of the concept) to argue that it actually helps consumers. Their argument always stems from the fear of over-regulation or a historical lack of net neutrality regulation that still allowed the internet to flourish (which is a nonsensical argument). They never challenge the technical rules themselves.
This interview (along with almost anything else coming from Pai) falls under this meaningless argument in opposition.
Oh goodie, I can't wait to pay extra for "professional-grade internet" because I want to access things like GitHub, and not just Facebook.
I'm not up for listening to a 50 minute interview with the guy, but if that quote is representative, he doesn't sound remotely well-intentioned.
Why would they invest in improvements when they have no competition?
It's a total spin job.