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Comment by Spivak | Hacker News Reader

This title is horribly misleading. The actual point of contention is whether the FCC's rules on speed disclosure preempt rules enacted by the state. This isn't Big Cable paying off lawmakers to stop some 'investigation', this is companies trying to avoid having deal with 50 different speed disclosure laws, and it could go either way.

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.

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I absolutely disagree for a number of reasons.

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 completely agree with you regarding the FCC's ability to create "law" and not just weak "regulation" or "rules" and also that the 10th amendment shouldn't be trampled on.

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.

> ... already having an HR department to deal with employees and labor laws

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?

And I follow the example. Except that it is not unique to telecoms and they already exist and are already a part of fixed costs.

> create some massive undue burden for a company that's big enough to be an ISP in all 50 states

Feature; not bug.

Okay, we get it: big companies are bad, small companies are good.

If that's your position why not just go for a largeness tax rather than passive aggressively adding stupid regulations like this.

Wow Spivak, tell us your true feelings darling.

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?

No, large companies with government granted monopolies are going to have higher regulation out of necessity. They already rank lower than any other companies on customer service purely because they don't have to care.

> 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

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-...

> It nukes the potential for upstarts.

Upstarts only have to deal with one state.

Wouldn't it make sense for a startup to begin in a single state and only expand once they have enough money/time to comply with laws and regulations in other states?

Depends on your technology. I used to finance satellites. State-by-state rules were a driving reason (for being-launched and yet-to-be launched constellations) behind most operators settling on selling bandwidth to ISPs, who have compliance and regulation figured out, versus trying to compete with them.

From your statement is a great parallel to Uber, which ignores local laws and has never made a profit. Yet, Uber is thought of by many as a successful company. Many times companies grow in order to continue to be able to grow.

Startups are nuked by the insane capital costs required to build an ISP.

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.

Why wouldn't they have the authority to do this? They were delegated their authority by Congress with the Communications Act.

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.

Because no where in the Communications Act does it say that federal regulations usurp state regulations when the state regulations are more strict. They are delegated the authority to regulate ISPs, not overrule states.

Hmm it didn't seem horribly misleading to me, either before or after reading the article. They are trying to stop state investigations. The title doesn't say anything about Big Cable paying off anyone, that's jumping to conclusions not stated in the title.

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.

> 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?

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??

Does it matter if it is confusing?

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.

Maybe? With a uniform national standard for internet speeds you know that 100Mb/s means, say, the average speed at peak network times.

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."

That would be amazing, if the FCC or federal government were capable of penning and enforcing something like that.

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.

Counter-argument would be that permitting states to stipulate their own criteria for measuring bandwidth delivered would further motivate providers to build out infrastructure that actually delivers the quality of service they're claiming. (Or at bare minimum, compel more honest advertising.) Otherwise, providers will A) tweak their infra to spoof popular speed test methods, and B) lobby the FCC to soften the regs that apply to them. Indeed, they do both already. Your speedtest.nets are regularly skewed by providers siting its nodes inside their networks.

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.

Usually when someone ends a sentence with "would be confusing to consumers" its a give away that means a fast one is being pulled on the consumer.

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?

> that means a fast one is being pulled on the consumer.

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.

Ah, so you are involved in this lobby effort somehow? I noticed you said "the closest metric "we" can come up with". If you are you should declare your lobbying interest when commenting. I'm sure theres a site rule about that.

I think "maybe I shouldnt, in general, trust the conclusions of" your comment?

Orthogonal. lol... ummm ok.

* I meant we as in the technical community.

* 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.

Im not sure which technical community you are talking about? Im fairly certain most technical communities regardless of outlook dont want higher bills, for poorer service, from these companies, who's only skill is lobbying politicians and milking 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.

> I'm not sure...

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.

Ours? quite the assumption. Again, I have no doubt in my mind that the large Internet providers care little about consumers, and only about their bottom line. Which is fine. Thats what corporations do. Paying off people to get that, is what I'm disagreeing with, and this reeks of that.

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?

They're not just trying to preempt any hypothetical disclosure "rules" but to make generally-applicable fraud and misrepresentation laws inapplicable to ISPs.

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.

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