FCC chairman tips his hand on net neutrality

It would be a stinging defeat for their expensive lobbyists, who will be fired.

Comcast, Time Warner, AT&T, and Verizon won't change much.

A lot of people forget that AT&T, Verizon, and Google put forth Net Neutrality legislation that was perfectly good, but limited temporarily to "wireline" services, because they wanted time to regulate wireless.

That was like three or four years ago, so the argument at the time that we couldn't wait for wireless regulation is completely insolvent, since we also still don't have wireless regulation, and Title II is unlikely to cover wireless services, at least in this round - though I could be proven wrong.

Look, I'm an anti-capitalist, anti-corporate activist, but most people, fellow engineers included, have no idea what they're talking about with Net Neutrality. Most people are protecting the interests of Netflix, who is a major corporation with a massive technology budget dwarfed only by its' massive budget for paying the MPAA.

But please, keep regurgitating Netflix's talking points about how noone will be able to start a company in their basement ever again - an odd complaint, since before Comcast throttled Netflix to something like 70% of the total Comcast network, Netflix themselves may have been causing problems for people trying to launch companies from basements or garages, or just check their e-mail.

Title II is a victory for the internet, it should be a utility, I've been saying this for the entire 20 years of my career since I was involved in Time Warner's beta test of Roadrunner and noticed that as an entertainment service, it wasn't regulated like my ISDN line.

But the way this is all going down, it's clear to me that something is happening behind the scenes, and I think it looks like Netflix pouring water into a bucket with a few drops of Net Neutrality.

No, not really. It would likely commoditize the service of providing Internet addressable IP routing and set it on a path for cutting all of the margin out of the business for the ISP, while likely doing nothing to cut the overall cost of the combined service to the consumer. The companies that own the lines would still take the lion's share of the profit under a title II scenario - they'd just take it in different ways than they do today. Line sharing rules weren't effective for DSL, and I don't see how the same dance played out 15 years later would have any different results.

We need to do something, I just don't think title II is the right way to go.

Sonic.net is, for my money (and they get my money, rather than Comcast or someone else who would sell me a fatter, but less capable or otherwise somehow restricted, pipe for less money), a perfect example of a "good ISP".

What makes them good? They act like a dumb pipe. They don't block things. They don't log things. They don't throttle things. They don't care what I use my service for. They fix things when things break. They stay out of my way.

And, somehow, they manage to bring in enough money that they're deploying FTTP trials in multiple cities.

> there's no money in building "dumb" anything

Historically, there have been many successful utility providers that earned a lot of money producing simple products. Telephone companies, power companies, and oil refineries, neither won a stronghold by producing "smart" products. Most however did produce illegal monopolies.

>At the end of the day, users are willing to pay, e.g., $15/month for Netflix, and don't care about who gets what part of that money. Fights over net neutrality and copyright are about how this $15 gets split up between: content creators, infrastructure providers, and user-facing websites.

This is incorrect, the actual fight is about killing Netflix as a business. The idea is to gradually force Netflix to raise their prices to a point where it no longer seems to be a cheap alternative to cable/satellite television.

I don't even think telecom is ambiguous or used loosely in this regard; comcast provides telephone service, and "telecom", short for "telecommunications", is defined as "communication over a distance by cable, telegraph, telephone, or broadcasting."

So in this, every single ISP is a telecom

Still not sure what you do in an overbuilding scenario. Those poles have physical restrictions such as weight and volume. You can't have 10 different telcos serve a neighborhood: there would just be too much gear on the pole. So how do you decide who gets the space on the poles? The sensible argument says you put them up for bid in an auction, but then the incumbents still have a huge sunk cost advantage.

Most people don't need wires. In a normal density neighborhood, wireless on the pole would serve most people's needs. I am absolutely in favor of the last mile being owned by the people and ISPs competing for services and bandwidth. That also means that cross town traffic would be extremely low cost (free or a couple bucks a month).

I think the more fitting comparison would be this:

How many roads does your driveway open onto? Just one, right?

Now, would you rather that be a public and regulated road, or a private road where the road owner can set up a tollbooth at the end of the driveway and even charge you extra for driving a Toyota instead of a Ford?

Look at UK. The wire is owned by a third party that rents the use of the wires for your service. So we only need one fiber and one copper wire.

P.S. I live int he city I don't have a drive way the street is my park lot :)

Interest in CLEC DSL fell off because interest in DSL fell off in general. It just can't compete with cable or fiber for bandwidth.

If the coax and/or fiber lines were open to competitive carriers, I bet there would be quite a bit of interest.

Not all regulation is the same.

Can't be worse than what we have, and our current course

Either the ISP aspect of the Internet is open to regulation or it's not. That's true right now.

If it isn't, any net neutrality effort is going to get knocked down sooner or later. You have little to worry about.

If it is, this is the right kind of regulation to have, because it prevents a potential (and arguably current) oligarchy from effectively regulating the service aspect of the Internet.

I'm all for free market economics as the rational default when starting from an even playing field. However, the current market leaders got where they are by being treated as utilities from the start, in terms of subsidy and privilege for placement of infrastructure.

It doesn't make sense to give them protectionist advantages, then go hands off from there. There's a great argument for not doing the former in the first place (albeit one that probably would have prevented the Internet at current scale), but once you've committed you have to follow through.

I'll worry about the slippery slope of further regulation when it starts happening. Right now, I'm considerably more worried about ICE and ICANN jurisdiction issues and copyright/trade treaties, as far as threats to the Internet by the American government and corporate structure go.

What's more interesting about this to me is the "only 25Mbps+ is broadband" news bit from yesterday. Does that create a big loophole for exemption from Title II for the grand majority of US internet service that doesn't meet that bar?

Pole access. That's a Good Thing.

Price controls

Higher taxes on ISP service

metered service

drastic reduction in investment due to uncertainty

pole attachment rates could go up since some towns charge more for title II services (for some dumb reason)

The next republican run FCC ruling that not blocking porn is unreasonable

The next FCC ruling that not blocking piracy is unreasonable

All sorts of shit.

Providers would be required to allow competitors on their networks. (Similar to how AT&T is required to let other phone companies sell you home phone service over 'AT&Ts' phone line).

This opens up all sorts of good things:

- Faster peak speeds

- Lower latency

- Better customer support / service

- Lower prices

- Stronger net neutrality protections (no throttling Netflix, for instance)

Monopoly ISP's like Comcast / AT&T / Verizon will never do all of these things on their own -- there's no incentive for them to do so.

But if Title II passes, it will make it legal for competitors to start up and reuse the existing infrastructure while new ISPs attempt to build their own, then all of these things will probably occur. Similar to how this all occurred with phone companies when Title II - like protections passed on phone lines.

> It's a 1970's style, "ask permission before you do anything" regulatory framework.

No one yet who has made this claim has established that Title II classification would mandate the FCC to use that kind of regulatory framework, though I don't think there is any dispute that Title II classification could support such a framework.

Of course, rather than arguing about abstractions, we can argue once actual regulations are proposed, at which point -- and only at which point -- will we actually discussing anything other than what someone speculates might be the proposed regulatory framework.

What is a good way to go about it?

Because from my perspective, there's more than enough accumulated capital / lobbying / entrenched market positions to make disruption of the market a pipe dream.

In that case, I consider slapping "too burdensome" regulations and then later parring them down the lesser of two evils.

Is or isn't internet access important enough to be treated as a utility? That's what Title II asks in my opinion.

If so, then sort out the implementation details later.

(Disclaimer: In a semi-related note, I support the ACA for the same reasons. Is universal health insurance important enough to codify in law? If so, work on the details after you get that point down on paper.)

I'm not too young to remember that. Air transport regulation isn't a particularly good comparison. The current wireless cell phone industry is a much better comparison, because it's already regulated under Title II. If that really meant "ask permission before you do anything," cell phone providers would be having to go before the FCC -- or state commissions -- to introduce new service plans or even change existing ones. They do not.

I think it's too easy to leap on the "regulation bad, deregulation good" bandwagon; in practice, it's rarely that clearcut. Look at phone company deregulation in the 90s and the rise of CLECs, Competitive Local Exchange Carriers -- CLECs would never have existed without deregulation, right? That's true, yet it turns out that what created the first C was actually new regulation: incumbent LECs were required to share their networks with competitors. If that sort of "government interference in the market" had happened in the early 2000s with data communications, the end result might well have been having half a dozen different ISPs to choose from no matter where you lived, rather than a choice between your single cable company and your single phone company. (Of course, like what actually happened to CLECs, there's also a good chance that the lack of regulation meant nothing would prevent a series of ever more massive corporate mergers leaving us with the same lack of choice we had before deregulation, but never mind.)

> Most people here, myself included, are too young to remember what the world looked like when other industries were regulated under rules similar to Title II. It's a 1970's style, "ask permission before you do anything" regulatory framework

Wheeler is not going in that direction. There's much more detail in the Ars article: http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/01/title-ii-for-interne...

An excerpt:

------------------

Wheeler went in to a little more depth about the upcoming proposed rules, which he says will be circulated within the Commission on February 5 and voted on on February 26. The chairman—who formerly led cable and wireless industry trade groups—said that in the '90s he worked on the industry side as the FCC crafted section 332 of the Communications Act dealing with mobile services and he implied that the section informed the way the FCC has structured the proposed rules.

“It just so happens that 20 years ago I was the guy that negotiated on behalf of the wireless industry to establish Section 332," Wheeler said.

“Section 332 says that wireless should be regulated under Title II as a common carrier, except that the FCC is instructed to forbear from onerous provisions and inappropriate provisions of Title II, except for section 201 and 202, which is just and reasonable, and Section 208, which is consumer protection," he added.

Sections 201, 202, and 208 include requirements for reasonable rates and practices, a prohibition against unjust or unreasonable discrimination in rates and practices, and the establishment of a complaint process. Wireless voice—but not data—is regulated under Title II. The FCC could reclassify both fixed and wireless broadband as Title II if it so chooses.

”So I say to myself, 'ok there is a way to do Title II right, and sure there are many ways to do Title II that would thwart investment, but there are other ways to do Title II,'” Wheeler told Shapiro on stage. “We ought to take a look at how that fits together with consumer protection.”

Wheeler urged listeners to look at the wireless industry under Title II to see how the FCC might enforce it. “There is no need to file tariffs, there is no need to file all these informational activities,” Wheeler said. “The problem we had at that time [in the 90’s] was the wireless industry was having to go before state commissions to change rates.” Having the FCC approve all rate changes, Wheeler seemed to imply, is not what he wants. Obama has also said the FCC should not impose rate regulation.

”We’re gonna have rules that say—we're going to propose rules that say, 'no blocking, no throttling, no paid prioritization,' and that there is a yardstick against which behavior should be measured, and that yardstick was 'just and reasonable,'" he said.

Why wouldn't companies compete at least as much as now? They might charge more for higher tiers but I don't see any, justification behind your assertions.

Other countries have to dig up the ground too, and they have competition. And no, not every of those countries has public last-mile infrastructure, the ISPs actually build it themselves.

I'm not sure how true that is. Generally heading something like the FCC is a bit of a death sentence to your political career. You are sort of cordoned into the bureaucrat/lobbyist pool.