AT&T claims ‘strong’ net neutrality would ruin the Internet
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
The author argues that Title-II reclassification wouldn't expose content companies to regulation, but how does he explain the fact that VOIP services are required to contribute to USF? Isn't VOIP just content too?
Title II is a Depression-era regulatory regime, designed back when people thought that things like government-regulated rates and prices were a good idea. That's not the way forward, it's the way backward.
As far as the USF goes it is already being spent on broadband: http://www.fcc.gov/encyclopedia/connecting-america
At which point, it probably makes sense for the USF to be funded by ISPs as well as phone providers. However, the fee structure would need to be altered to not run off what is basically a long distance call tax.
The FCC doesn't have the power to do that, however. Congress would need to fix it. Shall we begin praying for miracles?
"Unfortunately, as Netflix is not determined to be a 'critical service' under Title II 2.0, we are forced to ask for additional funds so that we may meet our QoS guarantees for Hospitals, Police, and other life saving services. You don't really value saving lives beneath your entertainment, do you? You'd be a terrible person if you did..."
If that is the case, it is going to be Netflix + Google + Token support from other tech companies vs. all of the ISPs. The ISPs are only pulling this stunt with video services and I doubt the other tech companies are going to throw a ton of money to help "other people".
I'm not sure the tech side would win that fight which is what makes me uncomfortable.
You need a certain minimum amount of money, but after that it's more about ideology and jobs. The tech industry has plenty of money, but it's ideology is not easy to fit into a traditional classification, and it doesn't create that many jobs per dollar of revenue.
AT&T is very effective at lobbying because they can go up to a Republican and say: "look, the internet companies want to revive this FDR-era regulation! Also, we create thousands of jobs for ordinary Americans like utility pole maintenance workers." Per dollar of lobbying expenditure, that's a much more compelling message than: "{something about openness} and also we create a few jobs most people in your district don't have the education to get and most of these jobs are in California anyway."
I never said the process requires ridiculous amounts of money. I just pointed out I fully expect the process to result in rather large loopholes that are in the ISP's favor.
Ah well, it seems we more or less agree, so I probably should stop pestering you. ;)
One could argue that depression era policies were enacted because capital markets proved they could not regulate themselves. I have similar doubts about regulation and internet service providers.
The internet was born into this era of regulation, and has become one of the most important achievements of human civilization. It's hard to argue that things would've been better if AT&T would've been able to use the lion's share of internet bandwidth for a select few... private video conferencing streams, etc.
Which is sort of like saying I'd rather be eaten by wolf than a tiger, because a wolf is smaller.
Hell, the government can't even effectively regulate itself. Look at the NSA "oversight" for example. Ostensibly it is there to regulate the NSA. In fact the NSA simply refuses requests by the oversight committee and nothing happens.
At what point with the AT&T's just start saying no to regulator demands and get away with it? I suspect its already happening.
The revolving door between Wall street and government, the dark money in super pacs, the "massive" fines for actions which resulted in much larger profits for banks and corporations, the extremely restrictive costs of running a campaign, all of these things point to the United States being what is essentially a kleptocracy.
Of course you don't trust the government. You have little to no representation. When was the last time congressional approval was above 30%? And does anything ever change?
And until these things change, until people have actual representation by their representatives, there will be no check on either the encroaching police state exemplified by collusion between agencies (DEA and NSA), the Obama administrations attempts to hide police force cellphone interception, and the rapid militarization of police forces around the country or on corporate wrong doings.
Admittedly, the situation is rosy in some respects. The drug war seems to be winding down, albeit slowly. The war on terror might even be abating a bit, although this new situation with ISIS and Ukraine may yet prove fruitful for those who are entertained by the idea of war. The LGBT community is recognizing the rights they deserve. There have been "some" checks on the banks.
But is it enough?
Just a footnote, some of this is a relatively simplistic view of incredibly complex organizations and power structures.
As opendais mentioned, an easy fix is to allocate this fund towards broadband connectivity instead of (just) phone service, which seems to be already in the works.
> That's not the way forward, it's the way backward.
I don't think anybody reasonably argues that Title II reclassification is a panacea; the Title II regulations may very well need to be updated themselves, but the structure of being regulated as a "cable service" no longer makes sense for ISPs.
Either way, we're talking about massive changes that need to be made, so you're correct that no single change is going to be sufficient, and it's often the case of "six steps forward, five steps back". But it's still an improvement.
That's not the point. If Title-II gives the FCC the right to force VOIP companies to contribute to the USF, how is any other content service that runs over the internet safe? It's just an example of the kind of unforeseen consequences of Title-II that net neutrality advocates don't think about.
Is your only complaint against Title II the USF? That seems like a solvable problem.
I don't think I've ever read anything so... conceited on HN, and that's saying something. The choice to live in a rural area may have been made involuntarily.
I believe that nearly any person living in a rural area could move to a more populated area, if they desired.
What if you want to be a stereotypical farmer, on a farm 50 miles from any city? That is your choice. However, one side effect of that choice is that you have to live with dialup Internet access. Just take that into account when making your decision.
Having inadequate money to move to a city or suburb or get an education, being born into a rural family with inadequate money to move or become educated, etc.
From one city-dweller to another: give me a break. Did it ever occur to you that we city-dwellers benefit from having people living in rural areas? These are the people who grow our food, work in our mines, generate our electricity, and so on. And when do you plan to thank them for all the services of ours that they pay for? Think: preventing acts of terrorism, securing ports, virtually every other telecom law?
The point, of course, is that, as common members of a society, we all pay to support one another in various ways. Such a network of mutual support is what makes us a community and not just a swath of land with a border around it. There's no room for smug demands for gratitude.
The principle of universal service at a "reasonable charge" (though not the USF) dates from the same period and is also outdated.
Life is full of trade-offs and where to live is certainly no exception. Some people have affordable houses on acres of land at affordable prices, pure mountain air, and outdoor recreation at their fingertips. I live in a tiny apartment, directly above a highway, and have to travel a few hours to go camping. It is no more appropriate to ask those who live in areas where it is less expensive to provide telecom services to subsidize those who live in areas where it is expensive than for the federal government to impose a property tax on properties over half an acre to subsidize green spaces in cities.
One could argue that the very highway the grandparent lives by is a government-provided service to make it possible for him to go camping, but I don't know how the cost of building highways is shouldered by rural vs urban areas.
Declaring entire swaths of the population of a country like the United States unworthy of access to things like telephones and access to the global network is ridiculous enough. But it's particularly offensive given that it's cheaper to run and operate these systems today than it ever has been before.
Universal service is about more than telephones in the wilderness. I live in a state capital, about 500 yards from a major fiber optic termination point. Pretty sure my employer has a 40GB line on the telephone pole that I can see from my front porch. I have access to 20/1 cable service or 30/5 cable service at a 70% cost premium. Because there are few poor people there, the surrounding suburbs have FIOS and Cable, and the cable service is significantly less expensive.
There are many things that are cheaper in rural areas and more expensive in cities, I don't see any rural dwellers lining up to pay extra for goods and services that are cheaper in those areas in order to equalize prices in cities.
Sometimes unprofitable things need to be done.
You can be Net Neutral without being Title II'ed.
The problem is, the ISP's (including AT&T) are not Net Neutral.
To a large degree, its up to the discretion of FCC to decide what is and what isn't Title-II. FCC could defeine ISP as utility, and there would be no obligation to define video streaming as utility too.
Cicconi could argue that FCC should not have the power to do this but is choosing not to do so. Rather, he is trying to argue a slipper slope argument. I wonder if this is for political reasons, in order to not challenge the authority of FCC while they are deciding on the issue.
In general I prefer market solutions, but perfect competition isn't a good model for infrastructure, for a whole host of reasons.
I'm not opposed to some regulation in this area, but I worry about driving investment out of wireline. Goldman is already saying Verizon should ditch its wireline business. Also, I think some level of traffic shaping (e.g. throttling Bittorrent and prioritizing HTTP) is necessary just from a network engineering point of view. I don't want my Netflix packets waiting behind some BT packets containing pirated movies.
That isn't exactly what Goldman said.
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Goldman-Sachs-Wants-Veriz...
1) That was when they were trying to get them to merge with Vodafone.
2) That was more about dumping the overhead that came with the union Verizon was dealing with, dumping pension liabilities, etc. and basically splitting the "high growth" business off from the slower growth business.
That isn't really the same thing. All utilities are going to be low growth businesses by their very nature.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/1599192-slow-growth-but-a-hi...
Unless you are talking about a newer angle of attack from Goldman about it?
EDIT: I guess I'm trying to say it speaks more to Goldman's bias [splitting it up based on what looks to be growing faster so they can invest accordingly].
Even if the bittorrent packets do contain a pirated movie, sure you have the moral highground because you paid for your movie, but in the end they're both essentially the same thing.
That way the customer can decide what they want their own priorities to be without interfering with other customers.
These concepts can be applied to both outbound and, to a limited extent, inbound traffic. Throttle the customer+QoS pair, not the technology.
But even that is not addressing the point. The point is that if two people are paying for the same connection and using the same amount of bandwidth, the fact that one is using it for BT Sync and the other is using it for Netflix should be of no concern to the ISP and the ISP should be making no distinction between the two.
The problem is, if say Verizon was to honestly advertise their speed capabilities, they would have to advertise 100Kbit speeds on the minimum side. They are consistently, and purposefully lying about their networks capabilities.
Really? There was undoubtedly a lot of enthusiasm for planned economies in the '30s, but wasn't Title II based on older railroad anti-trust legislation? I presume you're not suggesting that the earlier era of the railroad trusts and Standard Oil should be the preferred model for the future...
I would agree with you if this discussion were taking place in 1994, when moving away from the legacy of the Bell System was kicking off.
Today, we seem to be going to a model where waves of consolidation are essentially rebuilding something that looks like the old days. If that's the future, you're going to need a strong regulatory leash to keep them under control.
That may be, but I have. And if the ISPs are reclassified as Title II, perhaps one of the outcomes would be the use of the USF to bring broadband to underserved communities. The USF does quite a bit more than 'connect the poor to phone service.'
* It helps ensure that consumers in all regions of the nation pay similar rates to those in urban areas. * Discounts that make basic service affordable for low-income consumers (Link-Up America and Lifeline) * Subsidies for rural health care, centering around video conferencing infrastructure and high speed internet access for rural medical providers * 'E-Rate,' which provides subsidies for internet access, telecom services, internal infrastructure and maintenance of the connections to schools and libraries. It pays a percentage based on need.
If broadband ISPs are reclassified as Title II, that may expand USF to even data costs from rural to urban areas. I'd say that's a win.
> [... VOIP & USF ...] It probably shouldn't: the reason it is right now probably comes down to ISPs not being required to contribute to the fund, and VOIP services come closest to the layman concept of what telecommunications is. They had to make up the gap of contribution caused by people dropping traditional telephony services for VOIP services, and Skype and Google Voice didn't have the FCC lobbying power that TimeWarnerComcastVerizon did.
> [Depression-era FUD]
USF was started by the act of '34, but was seriously updated in '96 to include things like "access to advanced telecommunication services."
Unfortunately, since broadband ISPs aren't Title II, they're probably not included in that.
Title II is appropriate. Broadband connections are the telecom infrastructure of the future, and they should be regulated as infrastructure.
Title II reclassification doesn't have to include price controls as individual portions of Title II can be forbeared.
As for VOIP, the general rule of thumb the FCC set for CALEA compliance works here as well: is the service a replacement for traditional phone service? If so, then they pay into USF. If not, there's no burden.
As for VOIP: the concerning thing there is the FCC's taxing of a content service that runs on the internet. I don't think that's a precedent most supporters of net neutrality want to embrace, but that's exactly the path you're going down with Title II.
The same thinking applies to all companies. If you're doing something regulated, then doing it over the Internet will still be regulated. If you're doing something unregulated then doing it over the Internet will still be unregulated. Title II shouldn't make any difference.
Facetime is a good example of a system that isn't and shouldn't be regulated because AFAIK it doesn't touch the PSTN.
That's the whole point of bringing up USF: one can imagine ways to limit the USF fees to the PSTN network, but the FCC has used its regulatory authority to reach a broader set of service providers. Also: the PSTN angle is a red herring anyway. Now that USF is used to fund broadband, its arbitrary to limit USF taxes to something that touches the PSTN network.
I would just challenge the premise. The question from the article is:
> How do you distinguish [AT&T's] telephony from Skype or Google Voice?
But the answer is easy. You don't. The only sensible reading of a conflict is if both AT&T and Skype are offering over the top VoIP service. If AT&T is offering PSTN service and Skype is offering VoIP then distinguishing them is trivial, and if AT&T starts offering VoIP then distinguishing them is unnecessary. You just don't put any VoIP services (or any other over the top services) under Title II, because Title II is for the physical network.
That makes perfect sense because what all of that stuff (e.g. USF) is intended to do is only necessary for the physical network. There is no reason for Skype not to offer VoIP service to everyone with internet access. It would occur even in the absence of regulation, as long as those people have a local physical network over which to run such services, which is the clear dividing line between what belongs under Title II and what doesn't.
But the FCC already decided, in 2006, that VOIP is subject to USF contributions.
No one is arguing for the FCC to set pricing, and having a universal service fund for broadband makes sense. USF funding was always levied at communication providers, not folks like plumbers that used the communication system.
Your arguments against common sense, limited regulations of the most important communication infrastructure in the country are a whole bunch of FUD. There's no way the FCC is every going to start charging email providers or taxing What's App.
I can see some sort of argument against the VoiP tax if there's a USF for broadband, but honestly, it's not a precedent that's heading anywhere.
Sure, but that assumes that all those implications are actually relevant.
> but how does he explain the fact that VOIP services are required to contribute to USF? Isn't VOIP just content too?
Not quite. If that VoIP service an actual phone number (i.e. one that could be called from within a traditional "copper" phone network), then (from what I understand) it acts as a provider of a phone network. Both Skype and Google Voice offer that functionality, so they're subject to USF fees.
IANAL, so that should be taken with a grain of salt; that's just my understanding of that particular corner case.
>My point is just that the content vs means comparison is a very gray area in the age of the internet.
Yes, there are gray areas everywhere, but sometimes it's not that complicated. This one isn't complicated. In the set of complicated and ambiguous issues, this one is very well defined.
Of course they are different in many ways. But they do have commonalities too. Its clear that fiber provides a means of communication. But I think if you asked the average person or lawmaker if Gmail provides a means of communication, they would also say yes. Is that even an unreasonable conclusion?
So we should stop analogizing to the antiquated vocabulary of the telecommunications era and start from scratch with ideas that actually make sense in the context of the Internet.
I think the outlook is bleak. We need Congress, the FCC, and likely the Supreme Court to all make decisions that hurt telecoms (which is unlikely).
edit: I found the section of the law about 'unjust'/'unreasonable' for common carriers:
Sec. 202 providers of basic services must
§ 202(a) engage in no “unjust or unreasonable
discrimination in charges, practices, classifications,
regulations, facilities, or services,” and
§ 202(b) charge “just and reasonable” rates
Image if we all said forget you Time/Warner and Verizon you treat us bad we are going to Sonic.net? What a powerful tool that would be. It's called $$$
"Fast lane deals" would/will be an expense for Netflix and give smaller competitors a slight advantage in that respect (if they can get the content and publicity, and improve the experience for users).
If ISPs degrade their services to the point that it's impossible to deliver streaming video without paying fast-lane protection money, that's something that could be resolved directly by lawmakers. E.g., prohibit marketing "up to 100 Mbit" if users can't even stream 2 Mbit video reliably. They could call the service "1 Mbit plus Netflix" or similar. This wouldn't grant any new authority to unelected FCC censors.
I'm not convinced title ii is the answer. But I am convinced that fast lanes don't make for good internet. Its unfortunate that this isn't a competitive industry because then consumers could just resolve the issue through their purchasing decisions.