There'll now be a 120 day commenting period; 60 days of comments from companies and the public, and then 60 days of replies to those comments from the same. After that, the final rulemaking will happen.
It's likely that the docket number for comments will continue to be 14-28, so if you want to ask the FCC to apply common carrier rules to the Internet under Title II, you can do so here: http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/upload/display?z=r8e2h and you can view previous comments here: http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/comment_search/execute?proceeding=1...
It's probably best to wait until the actual text of the NPRM is made public though, which'll likely happen very soon.
Edit: WaPo have now updated the title of the article to make it more accurate: "FCC approves plan to consider paid priority on Internet." Old title was "FCC approves plan to allow for paid priority on Internet."
Broadband's current classification as an information service, as if it's some sort of MovieFone for the 21st century, is so far removed from reality that the public should be in an uproar about it. Verizon itself has sought to classify its fiber buildouts under Title II so it can get fixed-rate access to existing right-of-way infrastructure, [1] on the technicality that its VOIP service running across those lines is regulated under Title II. Yet the main reason for building it is, of course, broadband, which dodged Title II on the even flimsier grounds of those ISP email and start pages you never use.
People should be holding signs outside the FCC building with "Title II" on them. The chair of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, Michael Powell, has ominously said attempts to reclassify broadband as Title II would be "World War III"[2] – but if he wants a fight, the FCC really should oblige him, and consumers should be beating the drums.
[1] http://www.theverge.com/2014/5/14/5716802/game-of-phones-how...
[2] http://www.theverge.com/2014/1/15/5311948/net-neutrality-and...
Or, you know, submitting comments to the FCC answering the question explicitly raised in the call for comments as to whether Title II or Section 706 is the most appropriate authority for Open Internet regulations with clear, specific, and coherent reasons why Title II is the right answer and how it should be applied.
The battle over getting Title II into consideration has already been won. The front has moved on to the details.
Why do we need any regulation in the first place? Net Neutrality has never truly existed. Netflix has the cheapest bandwidth deal of anyone... And they're trying to fool their users into lobbying the gov't for them to keep in that way. Small start-ups have always payed more per Megabit. That's the free market at work. You pay less for bulk. It makes sense. Every content provider (website, video service, shared host, VoIP provider, etc) has always been able to pay for priority at some level (be it through exclusive private fiber channels, faster DNS, the use of CDNs, or even QoS for latency-critical services like VoIP & gaming). This has generally been a good thing. Yes, some local monopolistic ISPs are acting up and something has to be done about that. But calling them utilities will only give them the power to impose terrifs and charge more... the opposite of what we want.
Why do you think DSL is such a ghetto? It's because it's subject to a higher level of regulations, and nobody wants to invest money in such a highly-regulated industry: http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Goldman-Sachs-Wants-Veriz....
Classifying cable broadband under Title II will definitely have the effect of killing Comcast and Time Warner's profit margins. Hooray! Your tribe wins, and the big evil telecom companies will be cut down to size!
Except the telecom companies make up 6 of the top 25 companies with the highest U.S. capital expenditures: http://news.investors.com/technology/091913-671712-institute.... You think they're going to keep pouring all that money into low-margin heavily-regulated infrastructure? No, they'll do what Goldman wants and divest themselves of regulated business lines, and take that money and put it into a profitable business sector.
Would Google still be inclined to invest money in Fiber?
That makes it only marginally less of a misrepresentation. The only universe in which this is a change toward allowing/considering paid prioritization is one in which the D.C. Circuit did not strike down the old Open Internet order. Its plain and simply a plan, on the question of paid prioritization, to restrict it, not "allow" or "consider" it, given that it is currently allowed without restrictions.
Any policy change can only be accurately be described in relation to the status quo to which it is a change.
To quote from the NYT article lede: "WASHINGTON — The Federal Communications Commission voted 3-2 on Thursday to invite public comment on a set of proposed rules aimed at guaranteeing an open Internet, prohibiting high-speed Internet service providers from blocking or discriminating against legal content flowing through their pipes. "
Am I reading this wrong or does that seem to say the opposite of what WaPo is saying?
- Proposes to retain the definitions and scope of the 2010 rules, which governed broadband Internet access service providers, but not services like enterprise services, Internet traffic exchange and specialized services.
- Proposes to enhance the existing transparency rule, which was upheld by the D.C. Circuit. The proposed enhancements would provide consumers, edge providers, and the Commission with tailored disclosures, including information on the nature of congestion that impacts consumers’ use of online services and timely notice of new practices.
- As part of the revived "no-blocking" rule, proposes ensuring that all who use the Internet can enjoy robust, fast and dynamic Internet access.
- Tentatively concludes that priority service offered exclusively by a broadband provider to an affiliate should be considered illegal until proven otherwise.
- Asks how to devise a rigorous, multi-factor "screen" to analyze whether any conduct hurts consumers, competition, free expression and civic engagement, and other criteria under a legal standard termed "commercial reasonableness."
- Asks a series of detailed questions about what legal authority provides the most effective means of keeping the Internet open: Section 706 or Title II.
- Proposes a multi-faceted process to promptly resolve and head off disputes, including an ombudsperson to act as a watchdog on behalf of consumers and start-ups and small businesses.
http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2014...
I there any grassroots organization which can/is opposing this ? I'd love join and contribute against this effort in an organized fashion.
http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-14-61A...
This was just released - I imagine there'll be a surge in articles once journalists have had time to digest the full document.
Whose on whose side here?
There's more confusion because much of the media coverage is ignoring the fact that the FCC's old order was struck down by the courts as exceeding the FCC's authority, so that the current status quo is that there is no regulation in this area (except the transparency rule from the old order, which the court let stand), so even if the attempt to work within the court order makes the non-discrimination provision of a new order weaker than the old order, it's not a weakening of existing non-discrimination rules, because there are no existing non-discrimination or non-blocking rules.
> Whose on whose side here?
The pro-neutrality side on the FCC is the side that is proposing rules aimed at acheiving neutrality as far as possible under the court-imposed limits and seeking input from the public about how to make those rules most effective. The anti-neutrality side is the side that is opposed to the idea of any kind of rules on this issue.
The Democrats believe that the federal government, acting through the FCC, should regulate broadband.
Both sides seem to accept the idea of an "internet fast-lane," they just disagree about how to get there. None of them are on our side.
I think no one is opposed to ISPs operating in their customer's best interest, specifically delivering internet at advertised speed. I think there's a real need for more ISP competition and less collusion/vertical integration (NBC-Universal-Comcast-Time Warner).
If the ISPs start shoving non-paying sites into a slow lane a class action lawsuit makes sense, not congressional oversight – because congressional oversight generally makes things worse.
If the FCC classifies ISPs as Title II common carriers, that lawsuit might have legs. Also, Comcast is threatening to divest themselves of the ISP business and just be a media company (if ISPs become Title II) – sounds good to me, that way the ISP can compete just on its merits and not on how much money it brings NBC-Universal.
I'd like to avoid getting congress involved, that's all.
I have a measure in mind that won't harm consumers. Don't allow ISPs to discriminate against users regarding their already paid for internet traffic based on what they request. (Gee that sounds a lot like net neutrality.)
Anything less is open for abuse.
Perhaps "Discrimination" is a good word to tar this with, because it is. It's discrimination against companies, but it's also discrimination against users based on their tastes, preferences, and possibly socioeconomic status.
To say nothing of de-facto censorship issues.
This isn't about business, although we know the big ISPs behave badly as businesses (list various examples, monopoly issues) This isn't about who is paying and how much, although we know there are problems with this too (list examples, compare to rest of the world) This isn't even about 'fast lane' vs 'slow lane', although we know that this will be the results (list historical examples, monopilies) This is a direct attack on your personal freedoms. It is censorship and discrimination.
This bill makes Comcast and other ISPs your personal internet censor. They will be able to decide who has how much access to you. Although they may not choose to make it 'exactly' zero access, it may be too close to matter. Partial censorship, or not-as-fast access is still censorship. (Examples from history about drowning out voices and controlling the message).
This bill allows Comcast to discriminate against it's users.
Not only can Comcast (and other ISPs) control how fast you access the internet (which they can already do), this allows them to discriminate against you, based on what information you choose to request. Can't afford services that pay off Comcast or that Comcast doesn't like? You are less of a person, less deserving of the service you already paid for.
This also allow subtle and insidious racial or religious discrimination. Do you watch 'televangelists' live online? Comcast or other ISPs could decide a different denomination gets a nice stream, while your church gets the 'separate but not equal' choppy, laggy, broken stream. Do you decide to use services that operate in other countries to talk with family in other nations? Comcast could decide they aren't as good as their favorite service that costs more. Even more critically, that service that they like may not even be allowed by law in the country you are trying to talk to. Live video and voice chat can be hard to hear and understand under good circumstances, if Comcast never fixes problems unless companies 'pay up', then they can decide if you can really see your family using the tools available to them.
The free market cannot address this problem. Comcast and other ISPs have made this a controlled non-free market. Fair competition isn't possible in this space, because of their monopoly/duopoly control, and difficult regulations that they helped write and suit only their business models.
All netizens are equal. "Whoever can pay" isn't equal. "Whoever we choose" certainly isn't equal. Don't let Comcast make some "more equal" than others.
Overall, I think slowing down a webpage may be the wrong message. Straight up better or worse is the better message. Maybe a "congratulations, your ISP has decided you are worthy of accessing this page. Find out why your ISP thinks it has this right, and why your rights are being signed away." would be more effective. Or even a big splash with "Comcast has approved this website for viewing.", which may be REALLY effective if IP block based, to be the actual ISP.
To my mind, I can’t imagine a rule that describes a fast lane that doesn’t also describe a CDN.
> Transit networks like Level3, XO, Cogent and Tata perform two important services: (1) they carry traffic over long distances and (2) they provide access to every network on the global Internet. When Netflix connects directly to the Comcast network, Comcast is not providing either of the services typically provided by transit networks.
Basically, what is proposed here is preventing an ISP (which is already a recognizable category) from starting a CDN business — a very bad one, since it only delivers content to itself — and artificially slowing down non-CDN traffic that has already been paid for on the other end in order to prop up its CDN business.
Comcast is talking about "not decreasing" the availability of content. Some businesses can afford to pay to use already-paid-for infrastructure. Others are out of luck, and their content is not fully accessible. If Comcast did not exist, current users would not be able to request content, but the market could provide a solution in an alternate ISP. With Comcast the market cannot provide a solution, because it is actively being suppressed by Comcast.
So you'd ban the large number of existing in-ISP CDNs and CDN/ISP partnerships, as well? (e.g. YouTube or Akamai mirroring content to servers directly on an ISP's network, to improve bandwidth and latency for that ISP's customers?)
Or, for that matter, you'd stop an ISP from offering a Debian mirror?
This is the line I repeat when discussing the issue with folks who are just learning about the issue.
[edit format]
FWIW: I'd prefer guaranteed super-fast DNS and guaranteed low latency, but I don't care too much whether content from Disney happens to download 10x faster than content from Youtube.
That's a pretty shakey one. Are people who can't afford Porsches being discriminated against based on their socioeconomic status?
And it's pretty easy to see where that could lead to discrimination.
It's (relatively) cheap for Netflix or their CDN partners to connect their content-serving systems to a few dozen "meet me" rooms where it's "easy" for Comcast to hook as many wires up as necessary to receive the requested data into their network at an acceptable rate. That's all Netflix or their CDNs need to worry about. And so it's (relatively) cheap for them to scale the amount of data they serve as their customer base, average viewing time and stream quality grow.
But Comcast has to deliver all this data to tens of millions of customers spread out around the nation. While it would be nice if their networks were sufficiently provisioned to serve, say, half their customers 20Mbit/sec continuously during primetime, that is just not the network they have today. It will always be cheaper for Netflix to turn up the spigot than for Comcast to build out its infrastructure. Should "network neutrality" force Comcast to spend billions every time Netflix doubles its streaming rate?
Yes, this is a definition of an ISP. The ISP transmits requests from users to the internet, and the requested data back to the users. This is the product that Comcast already provides and charges their users for.
The users ask for internet content, the ISP (Comcast) is responsible for delivering it. If the users are clamoring for more content, taking more bandwidth, so be it. Comcast charges end users more money for more bandwidth already, through different pricing Tiers. If their infrastructure isn't big enough to keep up with customers demands then either they aren't meeting their existing contractual obligations with their customers, or they are falling behind technology wise. They have the money to keep up. They tend not to invest enough in their infrastructure, but that is a business issue. If Comcast is unhappy that users are using the service they paid for, they may need to restructure their offering to users, for example paying for bandwidth as a 'per amount transferred'. The critical point here is that it is a relationship only between the ISP (Comcast) and the end user, and the content providers aren't involved.
It is incredibly dangerous to confuse their relationship with their users with outside entities.
Net neutrality doesn't mean Comcast has to handle double the traffic from Netflix. Net neutrality means that Comcast has to handle the traffic from Netflix in the same way it handles it from other places. It could be slow, choppy, and a bad experience. They could choose to invest in a better network or not. They can charge users for more bandwidth, or other related infrastructure services.
What they cannot be allowed to do is discriminate against users and outside companies.
The way this has always works, and is not changing based on anything 'network neutrality' related, is that generally the sending network (Netflix) pays the receiving network (Comcast) based on something like the 95th percentile of their sending rate. It maybe not be linear, but if Netflix starts sending 2x traffic, they will pay something like 1.8x-2x. That's not changing, and nobody is disputing this.
What we're talking about here is that Comcast could take a user's 20Mbps connection and decide that even though it's fully provisioned in the last mile for 20Mbps, and they have plenty of pipe to get the Netflix data to the Comcast side of the last mile, that Comcast can just decide that Netflix will only get 5Mbps of that 20Mbps, that is unless Netflix pays the ransom money to Comcast to change that arbitrary limit.
It can hit this number when the data is coming from distributed sources.
It should be able to hit this same number even if all the data was coming from 60 interlinks to netflix.
It's not about how fast the netflix access is in absolute terms, it's about whether it's throttled compared to other things.
Comcast is not obligated to speed up their entire network when their customers request more data from a provider, but they should be obligated to peer.
The phenomenon you describe is best analyzed as the assumptions behind the oversell ratio needing to change - customers' usage is becoming more correlated in time, and they have found a type of service that will expand to use all available bandwidth until each user has >500Mbit.
The appropriate thing to do is to either lower the advertised/supplied bandwidth rates, or to institute metered billing. The first one is a market non-starter as customers shop by large numbers (hence why cable got so popular over DSL). And people are rightfully worried about the second because there's very little competition in this market, and instances of such have appeared to take a punishment-based screw-the-customer approach rather than a selling-more-product-to-customer one.
I think the only legislative solution is to create competition in the consumer ISP space by making last-mile delivery a regulated wholesale utility with many transit providers competing for service.
That has nothing to do with intentionally throttling netflix traffic. Network neutrality has never forced Comcast to upgrade its infrastructure, so I'm not sure why that is even a question in your mind. We've had net neutrality for 20 years. Why would it all of a sudden force them to spend billions?
It wouldn't force an ISP take any action. Each ISP would only be forced to decide how much bandwidth to offer each consumer, and at what price point. If a particular ISP did not feel it wise to upgrade its infrastructure simply because Netflix increased its streaming rate, that ISP would be free not to make the investment.
So how do you deal with network congestion in that scenario? ISPs can continue to offer different pricing plans with different download rates. They can be transparent about the real download speeds for each plan. Perhaps they can even offer a speed estimator tool where the user picks a geographic endpoint and a time of day.
That solves part of the problem of congestion, in that consumer are (roughly) paying for the bandwidth they use. (Theoretically, the users' fees would be scaled to account for the cost of infrastructure upgrades.) But I'd still like to be able to quickly download, say, an API reference page from rubydoc.org without having my connection starved by torrents and video streaming. To that end, perhaps ISPs could grant each consumer a certain GB/month quota of "guaranteed max speed." I.e. until you exceed your quota of X GB per month, your traffic never falls below Y MB/sec, regardless of current network congestion. If you wanted to get really slick, you could even let customers opt certain traffic types out of that program. So I could say, for example, "use my max speed quota for regular HTTP, SSL, etc. usage, but never use it for video."
Ideally, each consumer would have several ISPs to choose from. In that case, the market could discover the optimal plan selections.
This is based on a misunderstanding of what network neutrality means. The question isn't whether Comcast invests in their network but whether they can charge different rates based on the kind of traffic rather than the total volume.
If Comcast wants to skimp on network infrastructure, no problem.
If Comcast wants to charge their customers more for a high speed or uncapped plan, no problem.
If Comcast wants to charge their customers more to watch Netflix than Google Play, problem.
Then they can build out their infrastructure with the new revenue.
Consumers pay based on speed of their connection. If ISP feels like the consumers are not paying enough, raise the prices.
Service providers (not ISPs, but the ones who run servers that consumers connect to) pay based on speed of their connection. If the ISP feels like service providers are not paying enough, raise the prices.
Why in the earth there is a need for slow/fast lanes and data caps?
I'm four years old. So please keep that in mind when explaing this to me. :)
Because once the middleman has established himself as a monopoly and everybody has to go through him with no alternative, he can make bank by having everybody pay more.
> and data caps?
Lets the ISP oversubscribe even more and extract even more money out of the system without providing any additional value whatsoever.
Amazon: OK, we'll sign a 4 year contract for 30x the base cost.
Comcast: Great
Year 5 comes around, Amazon wants a discount. Comcast refuses. Comcast then blocks all Amazon IP Address traffic until they reach a deal.
Comcast: Customers, you cannot access Amazon video on our service, but here's a $5 coupon to our own video on demand service
From what I understand, your example would not be permissable. I know there are downsides to this, but a lot of the negative sentiment I see about this seems like an exaggeration which may not work in our favor.
Note that large ISPs have done this for years, via in-ISP CDNs: if you have enough content, it makes sense to have copies of it to serve up directly from the ISP's network.
The primary concern I've seen raised by network neutrality advocates: because many people have very few available high-speed ISP choices (one cable provider and sometimes one fiber provider, since most people can't get competitive DSL), it may not work to just say "pick another ISP if you don't like what yours does". (That assumes enough ISP customers care enough to switch ISPs over this issue.)
Well, supporters of net neutrality say there is not a need, and that this is just ISPs being greedy.
My pet theory on why they've have been able to argue their case effectively: internet traffic (or at least some notion of "website popularity") follows a distribution with a long tail, meaning a small number of sites will always be responsible for a large % of traffic; this makes it easy and attractive for ISPs to target a few players for "protection", because it's easy for them to make the fallacious claim "hey, look Netflix is taking up X% of our bandwidth; that's not fair!" when this doesn't have much to do with Netflix per se, and when that scenario is actually much cheaper (because of caching, etc) to handle than a hypothetical one in which the same traffic is distributed more evenly.
Could also be used to make backroom deals where you "slowban" political undesirables.
It's just an alternate way of pricing the service. You could ask similar questions about a lot of industries:
- Why does Github charge the way it does and not just price the service per megabyte of data stored or per commit, etc?
- Why do fast food restaurants offer free soft drink refills for $0.99 but not offer a single fill for $0.50?
- Why do residential bandwidth providers not offer a service with guaranteed gamer-quality low latency?
- Why do restaurants not offer a discount for customers who decline the free bread and water?
- Why does the electricity supplied to my office come in normal power and brown power versions?
Oh, wait.
I feel like this isn't quite right.
Imagine you build a road. Who benefits? Drivers, obviously. But also store owners, because customers can now get to their stores. It's equally legitimate to charge the driver, via tolls, or the stores they drive to (via special tax districts). If you charge only the driver, you tap into only part of the net positive value created by the road.
This basic premise applies to cables and other infrastructure as much as it does to roads.
Netflix should be able to just block Comcast until they give in and agree to improve their peering.
I live in the UK though, where we have a competitive broadband market. The above tactic is less effective in the US because Comcast's users don't have anywhere else to go.
After watching the FCC hearing, it seemed like all of the people who were "for" open internet, and spoke of it from the consumer level (including Wheeler) voted for the proposal. The commissioners that said the FCC didn't have jurisdiction to regulate and to leave the market alone, voted against the proposal.
Isn't it the case that if they had voted against this, that we would have been in the exact same boat we are in now and therefore the agreement that Netflix signed would continue unabated?
In that case, it really didn't matter what they voted.
That's because the headline is an outright lie.
> After watching the FCC hearing, it seemed like all of the people who were "for" open internet, and spoke of it from the consumer level (including Wheeler) voted for the proposal.
Exactly. After the old Open Internet order was recently struck down as exceeding the FCCs authority, there are no rules limiting paid prioritization (or any of the other anti-neutrality practices the old Open Internet order addressed.) The current NPRM is both a concrete proposal and a call for public comment on alternative approaches to restore limits on anti-neutral activities by broadband providers. It is not a proposal to allow paid prioritization -- no proposal is necessary for that, as it is currently allowed without restriction. To the extent that it addresses paid prioritization, it is a proposal to restrict it.
> The commissioners that said the FCC didn't have jurisdiction to regulate and to leave the market alone, voted against the proposal.
Right.
> Isn't it the case that if they had voted against this, that we would have been in the exact same boat we are in now
No, if they voted against it, there wouldn't be an active rulemaking aimed at limiting the practice with a defined timeline, a proposal on the table, and a request for public comments on that proposal and specific alternatives. In either case, there are no actual rules in place, since this isn't actual rules, its a "Notice of Proposed Rulemaking", a formal call for public comment centered around concrete proposals and specified alternatives.
"We are gratified by the Court's decision today to vacate the previous FCC's order [to impose rules about net neutrality]. Our primary goal was always to clear our name and reputation. We have always been focused on serving our customers and delivering the quality open-Internet experience consumers want. Comcast remains committed to the FCC's existing open Internet principles, and we will continue to work constructively with this FCC as it determines how best to increase broadband adoption and preserve an open and vibrant Internet.
Comcast Statement on U.S. Court of Appeals Decision on Comcast v. FCC [6]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comcast_Corp._v._FCC#The_FCC.27...
Its the term that the FCC adopted first for its net neutrality efforts. Comcast, the first target of an enforcement action based on those principles, attempted to subvert the term to render it meaningless.
Yes, we are in the same boat with Netflix having to pay for bandwidth as before. However, by the FCC officially sanctioning something that would have been technically illegal before the Federal ruling, they've basically reversed course and declared open season on content providers the ISPs don't like.
No, net-neutrality proponents are saying the opposite of what they mean. They couch this in terms of "protecting the open internet." Except there never was an "open internet." Before the short-lived net neutrality regulations, cable companies were allowed to do whatever they wanted with their network. And that's true now that the regulations have been struck down. The cable companies do not need any sort of action by the FCC to be able to come to these agreements.
What net-neutrality proponents want is new regulations to keep cable companies from doing something that they currently are allowed to do, and except for a small period of time, were historically always allowed to do.
This should be the main issue at this year's elections. Unfortunately, this is America, where the main issues are only those the large campaign donors care about.
Right now thanks to a close confluence of remarkable factors, the barriers associated with starting something are almost negligible. The steady march of Moore's law combined with visualisation has given us servers that cost fractions of a penny to lease per hour. No one has had to beg or pay middlemen to use that server and reach customers around the world. At the other end, customers can finally view these bits, often streamed wirelessly, on magical slabs of glass and metal in their hand or what would have passed for a super-computer in a bygone age... All of this combined with a myriad of other factors has allowed anyone to start a billion dollar company. If this very fragile ecosystem is damaged and it dies out, where should someone ambitious go next to strike out on their own?
Each cable company will then assume the role of warlord for their userbase and proceed to dictate the terms and agreements under which their users will experience the internet. All of which guided solely by their desire to maximise profits.
If people aren't worried yet, they should be. Serfs didn't enjoy medieval Europe for a reason.
The only two viable routes out of this nightmare are:
1. Enshrine net-neutrality / common carrier status in law
or
2. Radically break up the US ISP/cable market so that real competition exists. This way Comcast is free to try and milk every teat they can find. If users or content providers don't like the result, Comcast can wither on the vine and die while competitors pick up their fleeing users.
This sounds an awful lot like extortion, and double billing.
ISP's... you have one (1) job. Deliver packets.
"I believe the process that got us to rulemaking today was flawed," she said. "I would have preferred a delay.""
---------------------------------
But... she voted yes anyway. WTF?
She doesn't think the actual NPRM represents the best way to acheive the objectives it seeks to serve, but agrees with the objectives. As an NPRM isn't an adopted regulations, its a proposal which sets out objectives, provides concrete proposed steps, and seeks public comment on those steps and alternatives to them, it may make sense to vote for an NPRM (especially when you believe that there is a large and active community that will provide alternatives) when you agree with the objectives but have strong disagreements on some elements of the implementation, rather than voting no and preventing any rulemaking directed at the objectives from proceeding.
She would prefer to delay and get a better (from her perspective) proposal before the public, but would rather have the process moving forward that will allow adopting rules than have the process stalled. The three that voted for the NPRM are the three commissioners that, differ as they might on the details, believe that the FCC should be pursuing net neutrality ("Open Internet") regulation, the two that voted against are the two that think that the FCC should not and that things like paid prioritization and all the other things net neutrality seeks to restrict should be permitted without restriction.
Much of the news coverage has inverted reality and portrayed the proposal as a change to permit paid prioritization, but it is a change (in relevant part) to prevent it, within the constraints imposed by the D.C. Circuit when they struck down the last FCC order intended to do that.
I may disagree with the decision, but I understand her position.
Yet she did not consider the future one bit.
wow,
such irony.
And then people are up in arms about moving backbone internet functionality out of US, claiming that the internet is in its most free form when situated in America. With this FCC ruling, it's more or less confirmed that this statement is a joke. American freedom seems to be restricted to the freedom to wield a firearm.
And who is to govern the rates (and tiers) of faster speeds? I can only assume ISPs will determine a cost based on aggregate bandwidth. But who is to say there can't be a fast lane, a faster lane, and a fastest lane? Sounds anti competitive to me (even the big name companies are against this!).
Last: "The telecom companies argue that without being able to charge tech firms for higher-speed connections, they will be unable to invest in faster connections for consumers" > Google Fiber is cheaper for one. Seconds, the telecom giants have all increased subscriptions so there is more money there. And, as time goes along shouldn't these providers become more efficient and costs should decrease anyway? Must be nice to have a sudo-monopoly in some markets.
All the ISPs will slow down all the major companies services, unless they pay up. There is no "faster" Internet. It's just "paying to get normal Internet back", like they've already done with Netflix:
http://knowmore.washingtonpost.com/2014/04/25/this-hilarious...
[1] - http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/photos-of-an-nsa-...
We should never look over the water and be thankful it's not happened to us, because all we're seeing is how our (near) future is likely to be.
" The proposal is not a final rule, but the three-to-two vote on Thursday is a significant step forward on a controversial idea that has invited fierce opposition from consumer advocates, Silicon Valley heavyweights, and Democratic lawmakers. "
Why the fuck are there party lines in the FCC? Or any other regulatory body for that matter?
Because regulators aren't angels that descend from heaven, but people peforming a political function, appointed and confirmed by elected politicians.
Or, more succinctly, because representative democracy.
The commissioners themselves have theories that fit into party politics as well.
The consolidation of media companies possibly served interests other than profits. Look at what Putin is allegedly doing with the internet. Maybe in a way the eventual intent of this is the same. And for the same purposes. I don't think we should let it get started just in case.
The ISPs, then, are claiming to be victims. When in reality they simply promise services that they can't cost-effectively deliver.
If I make contracts to give all of you a new pair of shoes every month. And you pay in advance. And then I run out of shoes before I can deliver on my promise...doesn't that mean that I don't know how to effectively run my business? Isn't that my fault for promising a service that I can't provide? Why would anyone feel sorry for me?
So we had a good time, haven't we...
For the skeptics, it appears to come down to the question: which route offers better prospects for upgrading our internet infrastructure? Choice one is relying on a for-profit corporation with an effective monopoly that is beholden to shareholders; Choice two is relying on elected politicians beholden to the voters.
If you think there is a different argument that can be made on behalf of the carriers or if you can make the above one better, I would be very interested in hearing it.
If you ignore the various arguments about ISPs trying to get paid twice for the same content, consider the possibility of an ISP and a major high-bandwidth content provider (YouTube, Netflix, Akamai, etc) trying to build a deal that's better for both of them and for the consumer. For instance, consider a CDN on the ISP's network. Consumers get content faster with lower latency; the content provider reduces their bandwidth costs by sending only one copy of $POPULAR_CONTENT rather than one per customer; the ISP has lower costs and makes its customers happier.
Network neutrality would ban that, too. So this isn't the kind of thing that can be settled with simple blanket statements like "carriers should not make deals with content providers" or "all content should be treated identically".
> For the skeptics, it appears to come down to the question: which route offers better prospects for upgrading our internet infrastructure? Choice one is relying on a for-profit corporation with an effective monopoly that is beholden to shareholders; Choice two is relying on elected politicians beholden to the voters.
I'm always impressed when people can say with a straight face that politicians listen to voters. Voters don't care about issues like these, unless you can divide the issue across party lines and successfully make it one of the very small number of visible issues in a political campaign.
I'd be more interested in seeing proposed solutions to the "effective monopoly" problem than to network neutrality. Solve the monopoly and issues like network neutrality will disappear along with it.
I'm not clear on how money changes hands in your case, but undoubtedly this arrangement would favor the ISP. As far as peering goes, it's a bit more complicated... server locations are more mobile than consumer locations, so there is less concern about an effective geographic monopoly for backbone providers. Without fully thinking through the economics of peering, my initial thought is that there should probably be a regulated amount that ISP's can charge to peer with backbone providers. Maybe cost plus a maintenance fee based on traffic volume.
Regarding voting, I just feel it's the better of two imperfect solutions.
"6. Enhance competition. The Commission will look for opportunities to enhance Internet access competition. One obvious candidate for close examination was raised in Judge Silberman’s separate opinion, namely legal restrictions on the ability of cities and towns to offer broadband services to consumers in their communities."
http://www.fcc.gov/document/statement-fcc-chairman-tom-wheel...
Tom Wheeler, the FCC Chairman, was appointed by President Obama and confirmed by the majority Democratic U.S. Senate in 2013 (lead by Harry Reid who also claims to be pro net neutrality) is going to kill Net Neutrality.
Please take some time to remind democratic politicians & supporters why practicing this sort of politics will come with a price.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit already killed net neutrality. Wheeler is trying to resurrect it within the limits set by the Court (if you want more than that Court will allow under current statutory authority, you need to get more net neutrality friendly people in Congress so that they can change the statute to give the FCC more authority with regard to net neutrality.)
No, the DC Circuit did that when it struck down the FCC's old Open Internet order. The FCC has proposed a draft plan to limit harassment by the trolls, and asked the public for comments on how to make it better before "official sanction" is given to any rule.
Some of my "favourite" takeaways:
He stressed consumers would be guaranteed a baseline of service Just like your internet provider says they don't throttle torrent traffic, but a few major ISP's have been caught out doing just that. The same is going to happen if this proposal goes ahead. Unless people breaking the rules are reported, they won't be caught and where will the resources for reporting infringer's come from?
Wheeler's proposal is part of a larger "net neutrality" plan that forbids Internet service providers from outright blocking Web sites I have no doubt in my mind, the reform Wheeler is pushing for is merely a door and there are definitely bigger things in store once the flood gates have been opened. The pressure will be too great to close them again.
The agency said it had developed a "multifaceted dispute resolution process" on enforcement and would consider appointing an "ombudsman" to oversee the process. The FCC has a shady history of resolving disputes, this is merely hot air to make the reforms not sound so bad. What happens when the resolution process breaks or is overwhelmed and can't cope with the number of infringements taking place?
As for a handful of key entities controlling what happens with the pipeline, China is a classic example of what happens when you let a sole entity dictate something like the Internet and even then, the great firewall doesn't stop everything.
Then there are questions about conflicts of interest. What happens when say a company like Comcast owns a stake in a company like Netflix and conspire to extort a competitor like Hulu (asking for exorbitant amounts of cash for speed). Who sets the price of these fast lanes and will prices be capped to prevent extortion? Too flawed to work.
Comcast actually owns part of Hulu, but its a purely economic ownership interest (See https://www.fcc.gov/transaction/comcast-nbcu for more information)
Because they've done such a bang-up job of that thus far..? It's no secret that at comparable advertised speed, Netflix on Comcast was far worse than Netflix on other ISPs.
I'm not sure if they're really so deluded to think their enforcement is super great, or if they're just delivering placating sound bites.
However, in this case, we are talking about cable companies, and the bottleneck is presumably the last mile. So what these laws are really doing is enabling cable companies to extract even more monopoly rents, in the form of discriminatory pricing (even though it is the content providers that pay, the pipeline in question is closer to the end user than the content provider, and so if the issue were congestion pricing, and not discriminatory pricing, the charge would be on the end user, who is already paying).
Media misrepresentation happened.
> It seems like just yesterday that the FCC was the one creating the rules around net neutrality.
It still is.
> A federal court over-turns this and all of a sudden the FCC decides to go the complete opposite direction?
No, this is an attempt to revive, within the constraints of the court decision, what was struck down. The reporting that this is about "allowing" or "considering" paid prioritization ignores the fact that, as a result of the court decision, paid prioritization is allowed now, without any restrictions. This proposal would declare some paid prioritization (where it is offered exclusively to an affiliate of the ISP) presumptively illegal, and seek to restrict paid prioritization even outside of that which is presumptively illegal. This is in the exact same direction (though not the exact same mechanism, since that was ruled outside of the FCC's authority) as prior net neutrality orders from the FCC, which is why the same 3-2 partisan alignment on the FCC exists on the issue that has existed on net neutrality as a broad concept for quite some time.
I find this quote very interesting. Currently the trend seems to be that the sticker speed on a connection bears little resemblance to the actual speed. I wonder if he has a plan to change that or if this was just an offhand remark.
Also, how can an American government organisation consider paid priority on The (global) Internet? Isn't it better to say that "FCC approves plan to consider paid priority on Internet for those who connect to it via a US telecoms provider"?
If its approved, then there would be limits -- which do not currently exist -- on what USP based ISPs could do to discriminate between content sources in providing access to consumers. This includes, among others, content sources in foreign countries. So it certainly has implications for foreign content providers, but probably less for foreign consumers.
> Also, how can an American government organisation consider paid priority on The (global) Internet?
Its not. Its considering limiting what US broadband providers can do.
I haven't read it in full yet, but I've read the introduction, and the press coverage (surprise!) does not seem quite right to me.
I don't mean populists who make vague promises about net neutrality in order to be elected, then put people in place to undermine their promises -- I mean people who are in a position to fight the FCC, and who are actively doing it.
Meanwhile the monopoly in my area continues to receive my payments, no matter what they do.
Even if they tried, the incumbent ISPs can afford to underprice their services to make it uneconomical for competitors. E.g., they might lower prices drastically in competitive areas, and raise them in uncompetitive ones.
Help! More details anyone?
To be more clear, let's consider: I pay my ISP, a cable TV company, so much a month for Internet service with speeds -- Mbps, million bits per second -- as stated in the service, maybe 25 Mbps upload (from me to the Internet) speed and 101 Mbps download speed.
Now those speeds are just between my computer and my ISP. So, if I watch a video clip from some server in Romania, maybe I only get 2 Mbps for that video clip because that is all my ISP is getting from the server in Romania.
And I am paying nothing per bit moved. So, if I watch 10 movies a day at 4 billion bytes per movie, even then I don't pay more.
Now, to get the bits they send me, my ISP gets those from some connection(s) to the 'Internet backbone' or some 'points of presence' (PoP) or some such at various backbone 'tiers', 'peering centers', etc.
Now, long common in such digital communications have been 'quality of service' (QoS) and 'class of service' (CoS). QoS can have to do with latency (how long have to wait until the first packet arrives?), 'jitter' (the time between packets varies significantly?), dropped packets (TCP notices and requests retransmission), out of order packets (to be straightened out by the TCP logic or just handled by TCP requesting retransmission), etc. Heck, maybe with low QoS some packets come with coffee stains from a pass by the NSA or some such! And CoS might mean, if a router gets too busy (the way the Internet is designed, that can happen), then some packets from a lower 'class' of service can be dropped.
But my not very good understanding is that QoS and CoS, etc., don't much apply between my computer and my ISP and, really, apply mostly just to various parts of the 'Internet backbone' where the really big data rates are. And there my understanding is that QoS and CoS are essentially fixed and not adjusted just for me or Netflix, etc. E.g., once one of the packets headed for me gets on a wavelength on a long haul optical fiber, that packet will move just like many millions of others, that is, with full 'network neutrality'.
So, I ask for some packets from a server at Netflix, Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Vimeo, WaPo, NYT, HN, Microsoft's MSDN, etc. Then that server connects to essentially an ISP but with likely a connection to the Internet at 1, 10, 40, 100 Gbps (billion bits per second). And, really, my packets may come from Amazon Web Services (AWS), CloudFlare, Akamai, some colocation facility by Level3 or some such; e.g., the ads may come from some ad server quite far from where the data I personally was interested in came from.
Note: I'm building a Web site, and my local colocation facility says that they can provide me with dual Ethernet connections to the Internet at 10 Gbps per connection.
Note: Apparently roughly at present it is common commercial practice to have one cable with maybe 144 optical fibers each with a few dozen wavelengths of laser light (dense wavelength division multiplexing -- DWDM) with data rate of 40 or 100 Gbps per wavelength.
So, there is me, a little guy, getting the packets for, say, a Web page. Various servers send the packets, they rattle around in various tiers of the Internet backbone, treated in the backbone like any other packets, arrive at my ISP, and are sent to me over coax to my neighborhood and to me.
So, with this setup, just where could, say, Netflix be asked to pay more and for what? That is, Netflix is already paying their ISP. That ISP dumps the Netflix packets on the Internet backbone, and millions of consumer ISPs get the packets. My ISP is just a local guy; tough to believe that Netflix will pay them. Besides, there is no need for Netflix to pay my ISP since my ISP is already doing what they say, that is, as I can confirm with Web site
I'm getting the speeds I paid my ISP for.
Netflix is going to pay more to whom for what?
Now, maybe the issue is: If the Netflix ISP and my ISP are the same huge company, UGE, that, maybe, also provides on-line movies, then UGE can ask Netflix to pay more or one or the other of the UGE ISPs will throttle the Netflix data. Dirty business.
But Netflix is a big boy and could get a different ISP at their end. Then the UGE ISP who serves a consumer could find that the UGE ISP still throttles data from Netflix but not from the UGE movie service? Then the consumer's ISP would be failing to provide the data rate the consumer paid for.
Or, maybe, the UGE ISP that serves me might send the movies from the UGE movie service not part of the, say, 101 download speed from my ISP to me and, instead, provide me with, say, 141 Mbps while the UGE movie is playing. This situation would be 'tying', right? Then if Netflix wants to be part of this 141 Mbps to a user who paid for only 101 Mbps, then Netflix has to pay their UGE ISP more; this can work for UGE because they have two ISPs and 'own both ends of the wire'.
I can easily accept that a big company with interests at several parts of the Internet and of media more generally may use parts of their business to hurt competition. Such should be stopped.
But so far the public discussions seem to describe non-problems.
Antitrust laws, environmental laws etc. all force businesses to "operate in a certain way". You can argue for more or less regulation, but I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone to argue for no regulation.
Also, the issue is many people don't have a choice between ISPs, or if they do, it's between two major ISPs. If a Time Warner / Comcast juggernaut implements a fast lane, do you think that Verizon or whoever else won't?
I'm really starting to think mesh networks are going to be the only solution.
