Cable lobby tries to stop state investigations into slow broadband speeds
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
This is where it is astoundingly obvious that lobbyists have no technical sense whatsoever. It's analogous to saying "States shouldn't be allowed to determine their own optimal speed limits based on the terrain of their counties' geography ... or the conditions of the roads themselves. Potholes don't matter. Mountains, ice, etc., ... those local things are all irrelevant. Just tell us if it's a highway or rural road or freeway, and we'll let you know if it's allowing the best speed."
I understand why the telecoms are doing this. The ISPs don't want to have to upgrade infrastructure to deliver on their (often nationally)"advertised" promises. And behemoths like Comcast/Xfinity, Verizon, AT&T really don't want to invest in infrastructure that benefits only "the last mile" when they have impatient investors focused on the short-term stock price.
It's harder for a local company to lie to its customers... it will go out of business (or get sued into the ground) pretty quickly when it does. But for these entrenched behemoths, they just don't care. And that is really bad for almost everybody.
Companies dislike regulation, yet their constant stream of lies and half-truths make regulation necessary.
Spectrum is the latest champion: I get ads every week to upgrade to HS Internet + TV + Voice for only $29.95/month. Then the small print: that's $29.95/mo for each service, not total. You'd never know it from looking at the ads, and I didn't realize it for months. They should be forced to advertise this as $89.85/month in huge print, not $29.95.
I don't necessarily like it, but as a matter of law my opinion is that Big Cable should win this one. Setting a uniform national standard is one of the situations where federal laws commonly preempt state laws and the lack of a uniform standard would be confusing to consumers.
First, let's stop pretending that 50 state disclosure laws create some massive undue burden for a company that's big enough to be an ISP in all 50 states.
That would be a similar argument to saying that states shouldn't have minimum wages because it's "too hard" for Walmart to have 50 different state minimum wage laws. The only difference is disclosure laws are vastly more simple than labor laws.
Second, even if you assume the cable industry should have a single uniform standard, that's up to Congress, not the FCC to determine, so not only should Big Cable lose this on the grounds that state-level consumer protections are a good thing, they should on the grounds that the FCC has absolutely no authority to do this.
I disagree that already having an HR department to deal with employees and labor laws is equal to something else they have to comply with. Not a fair comparison. I do agree though that the burden is not undue.
Isn't the HR department a thing because of the employee labor laws?
Maybe they need a "Legal team" to manage their compliance with state regulations? Or is it possible Comcast already has a legal team covering all the other state regulations they already have to comply with?
Feature; not bug.
If that's your position why not just go for a largeness tax rather than passive aggressively adding stupid regulations like this.
Lobbyists get corporations out of paying tax. Lobbyists get larger companies out of doing anything that might hurt the CEOs bonus. I know you know this. Why pretend otherwise?
It's survivable, if inconvenient, for Comcast. It nukes the potential for upstarts. This "only big companies are in this industry so it's fine if we add a bunch of onerous regulation" attitude is self-defeating.
> the cable industry [having] a single uniform standard...[is] up to Congress, not the FCC
Congress delegated rule-making authority to the FCC with the Communications Act of 1934 [1]. This is how agencies work [2].
[1] http://www.legisworks.org/congress/73/publaw-416.pdf
[2] http://www.theintelligencer.com/local/article/Congressional-...
Upstarts only have to deal with one state.
And Congress did not delegate the ability to over ride states. That's why minimum wage can be higher in a state than federal law requires.
You can take issue with the fact that Congress is even allowed to delegate their authority, but given that, their rules seem to be no less law than what is passed by Congress.
There is a uniform national standard set by the FCC, but we have lots of federal laws that exceed or are exceeded by state laws. I'm not sure I understand why this would confuse consumers. I'm also not sure how big of a bandwidth measurement difference there can be, the article didn't elaborate on that... what different ways are there to measure or enforce 50Mb/s, and how far apart can they get? Is the problem more about what 50Mb/s means, or is it more about the differences in sustained bandwidth requirements?
How does this whole argument change if states agree to use the exact same measurements and criteria the FCC uses, but retain the ability to monitor and prosecute violations independently?
I feel like the subtext, reading between the lines, is the cable companies don't care about the "patchwork" problem, they just want less enforcement. The FCC can't cover everything, and they don't have that much power to stop cable if cable breaks the rules, especially in localized areas. Nor do they historically exercise that power unless things have gotten really far out of hand. Having states retain the ability to watch their own backs seems like a good idea to me.
And, in the egregious New York case, it's not just about "oh, congestion might mean we get unfairly dinged", it's things like Charter selling (renting) D1 / D2 modems that are physically incapable of more than twenty per cent of the "up to" speed they are charging the customer for.
"Here, pay for 100mbps Internet. Your modem cannot deliver more than 20mbps, but you're not supposed to know that. And when the FCC called us out on it, we avoided a fine by saying we'd replace those modems. And then we didn't."
And the FCC / cable lobby is wondering why states feel the need to go around them??
Knowing when you are allowed to record someone, what divorce means for you, how your housing taxes are calculated and a million other things are already confusing and yet that's not justification to just plow over state laws because people are confused.
With various states having different reporting rules there's going to be annoyances like, "Montana 50Mb/s is really Deleware 35Mb/s is really California 15Mb/s."
The reason states are having to step in however is precisely because in the world as it is the FCC lacks both the teeth and the interest needed to push regulations or law that technically minded and geared towards consumers.
ISPs want the FCC in charge because with them at the helm the uniform national standard would be "up to" means "under ideal conditions you could get this speed", in which case all we've done is barred states from forcing ISPs to either deliver on their promises or advertise their real rates.
At least if a few states get the legislation right others have the opportunity to learn from it and adopt similar laws.
All said I doubt consumers will notice at all. They're perfectly used to different regions having different speed offerings and all they will do is continue to compare what is offered to their home.
I hardly need 50mbit/s+ for residential use, yet I know perfectly well I'm not actually getting that bandwidth allocation by any meaningful measure. Running curl against cachefly routinely surpasses 50m, even during peak, yet transfers from other destinations will creep down to 10m.
New York, for instance, is suing Charter for lying to customers about lots of things not even covered by FCC policies; this is the lawsuit that prompted this effort by the ISPs.
The article subline, "Besides gutting net neutrality, industry wants less scrutiny of speed claims" says all that a person needs to know really.
I fail to see how big cable winning this benefits the consumer? unless you would prefer them not have to answer as to why they would sell "broadband" to consumers thats really over priced garbage at piss poor speeds?
I agree, that's the benefit of having a uniform national standard for reporting internet speeds. I see no problem with requiring ISPs to report and disclose a battery of metrics for people who care about such things but we're talking about advertising. For someone who's just trying to buy internet the question, "how fast is this internet package" should be standard, inflexible, and the closest metric we can come up correlates to actual user experience.
> The article subline
You really shouldn't, in general, trust the conclusions of the author. My whole point is those intentions don't necessarily follow from the actual case.
> I fail to see how big cable winning this benefits the consumer?
It doesn't but that's orthogonal to whether they should win or not.
I think "maybe I shouldnt, in general, trust the conclusions of" your comment?
Orthogonal. lol... ummm ok.
* You shouldn't -- that's the point. You should look at the actual facts of the case and decide for yourself what you think the intentions of the players are.
* Yes it is orthogonal. Who should win this case is decided by the authority and intent of the FCC: it has nothing to do with right or wrong or what helps or hurts consumers.
I thought I was looking at the facts of the case, and deciding for myself what the intentions of the players are?
Your last sentence is interesting. Therein lies whats wrong with the FCC. But what you seem to be OK with.
Ours? We were talking about coming up with the best single metric for internet speed which is difficult to cheat, provides some minimum guarantees, increases with speed and reliability, and correlates with the actual user perception of speed (e.g. latency alone would be a terrible metric because 1ms ping and 128k throughput isn't 'fast'). I would say such a metric is absolutely necessary for advertising purposes because without it companies will just choose their own to mislead consumers into worse service.
> I thought...
I only brought it up because you were citing the article authors opinions and conclusions from the facts as if they were facts themselves.
> Your last...
None of this really has anything to do with the FCC although my sentence might accidentally suggest it. How the courts rule will depend on their analysis of the FCC's authority, how their rules relate to state consumer protection laws, and if the FCC intended for their rules to be preemptive. The courts are the ones carrying out the formal process of law and being cold and analytical.
You were saying that they (the authors) were entirely wrong? Did you email the authors of the article? I hope so. Conclusions from facts has been a fairly solid method, that journalists (among others) have used to navigate through the understanding of many things, including the sheer amount of BS added in to bills, created by lobbyists on behalf of corporations.
What do you make of the large Corps suing local municipalities over local fiber offerings? Was that for a better technical standard? or was that just plain ole competition stomping? I'm sure their corporate angle has not changed here.
One standard (as you call it), means one office to subvert with lobbying. Why deny it?
You'd think in a democracy everyone involved in what's the textbook-definition of corruption would try to somewhat obscure what's going on, but nope: it's all in the open.
Weasel worded bills and regulations in documents pushed through to old men who have mostly no idea or concept of what they are changing, but who only know the value of $$$ campaign or personal contributions isn't something I would call open.
I realize this article is about cable providers promising one thing, and delivering another, I think it's interesting how quickly we and technology adapt to high-speed links and immediately demands MORE MORE MORE! It's a great time to be alive.
PS: 10Gbps is being rolled out in some area yet many places are still at under 1/1,000th those speeds. The gap has nothing to do with back-haul capacity it's all about monopolies squeezing there customers as much as possible. Consider, South Korea has 1Gbit/s connections for $20 per month. Yet people in the US are paying ~10x as much for 1/10th the bandwidth.
The worst possible thing that could happen to the telecom industry is for the government to expose how overcapacity most local networks are. We aren't talking Tier 1 Internet backbone networks. We are talking about local ISPs that usually fall into the category of Tier 2 or 3. That means they purchase "transit agreements" from Tier 1 networks to connect their users to the backbone. Most areas I have seen are way over capacity in need of upgraded equipment, too many splices on the cable, or limited bandwidth to their backbone connection to save money on overhead. Nobody wants to spend the money upgrading infrastructure for a market they are already making the maximum profit on. They do not want to send you a letter telling you that their network is miraculously upgrading to fiber and your speed will increase tenfold for no extra cost because copper is going away.
They will maintain the status quo for as long as possible. It is their only option to keep squeezing out every last cent they can on their current equipment and bandwidth agreements. Upgrading gets them very little in ROI. New shit is reserved for new markets like new roads going to high-end subdivisions.
Steam is great in this regard though, always maxes out my connection, even though I hardly game anymore.
ISPs know even most savvy customers wont be able to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are being throttled/not receiving their promised bandwidth and so they use that grey area to say "Yeah, must just be that server or a router or something."