GOP Bill Would Prohibit FCC From Reclassifying ISPs as Common Carriers
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
I'd love one too. I'm just wondering how you have a free market where market access requires digging up everyones front yards and roads. Almost like how "hmm, I want to start a rail / aerospace / automotive / etc) transport system of any kind. I want to build a better sewer system. Or water system. Or electrical grid. And all these industries require transports that go through private property.
And all of the other ones are considered common carrier infrastructure.
Maybe the real problem is that townships and such can dictate who can lay fiber cable. Would it be feasible for companies to run fiber to the home if they had to ask each private property holder to let them lay the lines in their yards? That doesn't happen now because townships et al would intervene and not let people do what they want with their land, even if you could dodge ever touching public property with a line deployment. I wonder how that would work.
Thing is, these assholes aren't suggesting anything like that. They just want monopoly power and extortion rights to hold back progress and innovation for generations while robbing people.
The vast majority of the existing fiber-coax cable networks were built with private money after exclusive cable franchises were made illegal in 1992.
He's not wrong. Title II is the worst kind of 1970's era regulatory framework, the kind we've been trying hard to leave behind since the Reagan. It was initially penned in 1934, for a world where AT&T was government-sanctioned monopoly. Worries about investment in the telecom sector were not applicable, because AT&T was guaranteed monopoly returns in consideration for being heavily regulated.
If you impose monopoly-era regulations without the security of having an actual monopoly, all you'll do is turn telecom into an investment ghetto. Who will want to invest tens of billions of dollars into "dumb pipes," just so software/internet companies can take all the profits because they're not regulated?
Note that countries that have gone the way of regulated telecom infrastructure didn't just impose common carrier regulations on existing privately-funded networks. E.g. when British Telecom was privatized, the government devised a system to guarantee that they would get substantial returns on their investment, and wrote those terms into the prospectus for private investors who bough the stock.
You think someone's going to invest tens of billions of dollars to try and lay down parallel wires to all of comcasts to compete with them? And would this be an efficient use of social resources?
You think Comcast is going to invest tens of billions of dollars into upgrading their infrastructure already, when they are already the only choice their customers have for broadband?
Moreover, you're taking a very narrow view of "competition" here. The average Comcast customer uses something like 2-3GB/month of data. That's easily accommodated by wireless. Demand for wireless data is exploding right now, not so much demand for wired data. That's real competition for Comcast.
Also, I'd like more information on the city not 'letting' Verizon wire Baltimore. It's possible this is what's going on, but the coverage I've seen is that Verizon simply chose not to, presumably because their market analysis was that it wouldn't be profitable enough. (I live in Baltimore too). http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Baltimore-Still-Begging-V...
Telecom companies already have this regulation. (CLEC 1996)
And as a result phone companies basically gave up on upgrading these networks and cable killed DSL.
Why do people want the Internet to be governed this way? I'd rather the FCC come up with new regulation, designed specifically for the Internet, which also happened to provide net neutrality protection which prevented the horror stories (pay-per-view websites, etc.) while still allowing the ISPs to perform route optimizations (peering agreements).
That said, it seems like Google is making a heavy investment into fiber, while supporting the concept of net neutrality, (or "dumb pipes" as you call them), so the argument that no one will invest is provably false.
The FCC would love to apply something lighter than Title II, like the "light touch" regime they have applied to cellular. But they don't have the authority under the Communications Act to come up with their own regime for telcos/cable companies.
It looks to me like US ISPs aren't investing in infrastructure now anyway, so I don't see how new regulations could make things worse.
To me the key issue is that there are two separate businesses that are conflated in current US ISPs: selling users a pipe to the Internet, and selling users particular content that comes over that pipe. Current ISPs take advantage of monopolies granted to them in particular geographic areas by state and local governments to force users to buy a package that combines both of these things, even if that's not really what users want.
Common carrier regulation of the "pipe to the Internet" business would force the two things to be separated. If Comcast wants to be a content company because that's where all the profits are, fine: but then they shouldn't be able to force users to buy their pipe to the Internet to get their content (still less should they be able to charge other content providers extra to get faster access to their users' pipe to the Internet).
I doubt it will go anywhere.
(Let's not let partisanship get in the way of net neutrality folks.)
Now, if a huge portion of the party co-signs or sign-support of the bill, then it would be fair to call it a "GOP Backed Bill". But right now, it's not.
I mean, its not yet as well-worn a thing as Republican bills to repeal the Affordable Care Act, but...
This bill is in strong alignment with that platform. I would be surprised if it does not get strong GOP support.
Seriously, the Democrats don't understand the internet just as much as the GOP, or the Green Party, etc.
Let's stop making this a partisanship issue. Net neutrality is too important for petty squabbling.
The understanding or lack thereof of the Democrats, Greens, etc., on internet matters is not relevant to my point, which was that this bill is in accord with official GOP policy and so dismissing it and so your quick dismissal of its threat is on shaky ground.
It's also worth noting that they tried to put killing net neutrality in as part of the deal to raise the debt ceiling in 2013.
The House also tried to kill net neutrality in 2011. The Republicans voted 234 to 2 (4 not voting for killing it). The Democrats voted 177 to 6 (9 not voting) to keep it.
[1] http://www.gop.com/2012-republican-platform_Reforming/#Item5
IMHO all US regulations that have the force of law should have to be passed by both houses of congress to be legal.
They do. House and Senate both have to approve, then comes the possible veto by the pres.
https://www.federalregister.gov/
Everything in there is regulations that were never passed explicitly by Congress or signed by the President. Congress passes laws giving broad regulatory guidelines, and executive agencies then write the detailed regulations that actually matter. The FCC is one such agency.
One could argue (and I would not disagree) that this is not really what the people who wrote the US Constitution intended. But it's how the system currently works.