Hours after President Obama called for the Federal Communications Commission to pass tougher regulations on high-speed Internet providers, the agency’s Democratic chairman told a group of business executives that he was moving in a different direction.
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The FCC Weighs Breaking with Obama over the Future of the Internet
|
Log In/Create an Account
| Top
| 26 comments
| Search Discussion
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 12 2014, @02:19PM
[sarcasm]That's just great... I'm happy to see that the FCC has the best interest of those who really matter in their cross hairs.[/sarcasm]
I've heard mutterings that net neutrality would be bad for consumers because it would stifle innovation in the ISP space but I've never actually heard anyone explain this. Would anyone care to give that a try?
(Score: 4, Informative) by Kilo110 on Wednesday November 12 2014, @02:27PM
The reasoning is this would rob them of additional cash flow to pay for capital expenditures. But this is bs since the major telcos consistantly posted record profit after record profit. They have plenty of money for capex but they just choose to pocket it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 12 2014, @02:32PM
So what you're saying is that it is a bit like the argument "but it will cost jobs"?
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday November 12 2014, @04:15PM
Indeed. Most importantly it will cost *their* lucrative lobbyist job when they leave office. And who else matters?
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 12 2014, @03:10PM
The FCC has to consider the best interests of all the stakeholders, from the owners of the bandwidth (ISPs), the content aggregators such as ESPN, and the ultimate providers of premium content such as the NFL.
Did I leave anyone out? Don't think so.
(Score: 1) by fnj on Wednesday November 12 2014, @04:11PM
Brilliant. Mod AC up.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 12 2014, @04:15PM
You left out the consumer who pays the fucking bills, asshat.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday November 12 2014, @04:20PM
Clearly they're not stakeholders - if they were they'd be turning a profit. They're just resources, and nobody cares about them so long as they can't leave.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 12 2014, @04:24PM
> You left out the consumer who pays the fucking bills, asshat.
AC says WOOOOOOSH!
(Score: 5, Interesting) by takyon on Wednesday November 12 2014, @03:23PM
Tom Wheeler doesn't seem particularly anti-net neutrality. He's just scared of the courts knocking down [wsj.com] portions of the agency's net authority once telecoms sue over Obama's aggressive approach.
Innovation in the ISP space is bullshit, which is why the ISP as a utility isn't so onerous. Your water utility doesn't innovate in any way that is noticeable by you, and it should stay that way. The anti-neutrality ISPs say they want to give certain applications, sites, or streams higher priority. They say that gaming, video streaming, filesharing, and other activities demand a different balance of bandwidth/latency. But it's not clear that net neutrality regulation would prevent QoS handling, and if they just improved their service to match the quality that's achievable in other countries or competitive markets, there wouldn't be a need to violate net neutrality to deal with the increasing video streaming and other trends. If the bandwidth is high, latency is low, if there are no caps, if mergers with content providers aren't approved, there's no ability of the ISP to squeeze more money out of the subscriber. The "innovation" means innovative ways to charge subscribers more. If you're lucky enough to have Google Fiber, you aren't wondering whether a particular application or video stream can get a "premium speed", because you are using an Internet service that isn't garbage (and Google has mulled increasing speeds to 10 Gbps within a decade [theregister.co.uk]). What happens when Google Fiber comes to town? Existing customers served by ISP monopolies or duopolies see their speeds magically double [fool.com], and plans to roll out fiber are fast tracked.
Throttling, monthly transfer caps, and paid prioritization are all ugly symptoms of the regional monopolies that have stifled U.S. Internet service. They have lobbied for laws that prevent municipalities from rolling out their own municipal broadband [arstechnica.com]. Too expensive to modernize U.S. Internet service? The telcos have swallowed up billions with nothing to show for it [pbs.org]. And if Google Fiber arrives (which can't be killed off legislatively like municipal broadband), expect scrambling among the local monopoly/duopoly.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday November 12 2014, @03:47PM
Arguments that "such and such a measure will promote innovation" are always nonsense.
Most organizations are innovating all the time, even the seemingly mundane ones. Everything from dentist office paperwork to gas meter readings to grocery store checkouts to warehouses have had significant changes over the last 15 years. One of the most revolutionary changes nobody paid much attention to was the rise of the inter-modal shipping container. There's also smaller bits of innovation: I'm sure somewhere there's an executive assistant that's figured out a really easy way to handle the constant battle for conference room time.
The reason for all that is twofold:
1. The organization wants more money, and innovating usually cuts costs or increases profits.
2. The people in that organization want their jobs to be easier. Which usually leads to lower costs.
That's true no matter how much money they have.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1) by takyon on Wednesday November 12 2014, @04:50PM
The ISPs can either innovate technologically by boosting speeds and improving service reliability, or they can innovate financially by charging Web companies for "fast lane" prioritization. It's that simple.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday November 12 2014, @04:28PM
Actually, did not the court specifically say they threw out the regulations because the FCC lacked the authority to implement it under the current ISP classification? While also pointing out that the FCC *did* have the authority to unilaterally reclassify ISPs as a utility in order to gain the authority they needed for the regulation?
To me it looks an awful lot like a bureaucratic dance: We wanted to! We tried! And... oh look, we just did the exact opposite and accidentally secured our lucrative relationships with the people we're supposed to be regulating. Drat, well, them's the breaks. Whatcha gonna to do?
(Score: 1) by takyon on Wednesday November 12 2014, @04:42PM
Well, Gigi Sohn, special counsel for external affairs at the FCC, basically downplayed the Washington Post story. You can hear about it and a lot more here [thedianerehmshow.org].
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by dmc on Thursday November 13 2014, @06:42AM
for the record, GoogleFiber is not what I would call a bastion for the pro-NetNeutrality argument.
http://cloudsession.com/dawg/downloads/misc/kag-draft-2k121024.pdf [cloudsession.com]
http://www.wired.com/2013/07/google-neutrality/ [wired.com]
In fact, IMHO, the Net Neutrality debate would be served well to start by answering head on the question of home serving. Once you have quibbled all you want about the obvious (to IT/engineering folk) pathological cases to that, the rest of Net Neutrality makes much more sense. But everyone seems to be debating while ignoring that debatably-significant class of internet use. And then when their 'hybrid' proposals to appease big business come out, the home server case, even somehow completely obfuscated, shows the horror of the situation-
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/10/31/does-the-fcc-really-not-get-it-about-the-internet/ [washingtonpost.com]
http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/11/fcc-chairman-skeptical-of-obamas-call-to-treat-broadband-as-a-utility/ [arstechnica.com]
Clue phone for the FCC Chairman- Net Neutrality is about your serving your role for the good of the country- that is US, not the group of special interests that you want to play policy protectionist for. Good Net Neutrality that optimally serves the public's interest *will affect existing big businesses*. There is no magical pony available. You get paid the big bucks to make the tough choices. With temptation all around. Good Luck...
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday November 13 2014, @07:17AM
Google Fiber Continues Awful ISP Tradition of Banning “Servers” [eff.org]
Google Fiber now explicitly permits home servers: Commercial servers still off limits, but a business product is in the works. [arstechnica.com]
For the record, your information on Google Fiber banning home servers is outdated (pre-October 2013), and Google clearly has some of the best policies and service quality in the industry. I'm sure you can point to a smaller and more server-friendly ISP... but that's not the point. The point is that entrenched ISPs deliver poor service quality, feel little to no pressure to improve the service, and have an interest in strategically degrading connections to Netflix and other content providers. If gigabit service became the norm for many Americans, big ISPs would find it difficult to violate net neutrality - if a customer's bandwidth rate isn't the bottleneck, there's no point in having a "fast lane". 100 mbps should be more than sufficient for 4K video, 1-10 gbps would allow multiple users per household to do just about anything simultaneously. Google doesn't need to be a knight in shining armor "do no evil" savior, especially given that most big American cities will not see Google Fiber expansion within the decade. The point is to force competition in places where it was lacking, shaming ISPs where necessary, and to increase public expectations and demand for better service. And Google apparently isn't losing (or planning to lose) any money on the Google Fiber division, which simply proves that ISPs with billions of dollars of easy service revenue aren't doing all they are capable of to improve their infrastructure.
The latest on Wheeler and the FCC is that they aren't planning on making any changes before January 2015. That's an easy position for them to defend; they can say that they want to take the time to get it right (they did get 4 million comments after all), or that they don't want to make big moves during the lame duck session of Congress. Am I confident that the FCC will get it right? Of course not. But the chances don't look terrible, and the Washington Post's initial coverage took statements out of context (that's if you believe Gigi Sohn, special counsel for external affairs at the FCC, among others).
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 12 2014, @04:03PM
I've heard mutterings that net neutrality would be bad for consumers because it would stifle innovation in the ISP space but I've never actually heard anyone explain this. Would anyone care to give that a try?
Nope. But I would like to give the question some context.
Net neutrality was the law of the land until 2005 when the supreme court ruled in Brand X [wikipedia.org] that the FCC had the legal authority to reclassify ISPs from Title II common carriers in the form of telecommunications services to Title I information services. Yes, that is right, classification under Title II would not be something new, it would be a return to how the internet access worked for the majority of its existence.
Since 2005 then we've seen a collapse in competition for internet services, it used to be that telecommunications operators had to lease out their cable plant at reasonable to rates to all comers - thus we used to have thousands of local internet service providers. But now the number of ISPs has basically collapsed to a handful of national ISPs like verizon, charter and comcast.
I went looking for statistics to see if the 2005 reclassification had an impact on service quality and they are surprisingly hard to find, the only thing I could find that was relatively consistent across multiple years was the Akamai state of the internet reports, and even those don't go back past 2009 (their earlier ones do not report the numbers in the same way making comparisons difficult). But here's what I found:
Average Connection Speed by Country
Quarter Ranking Mbps source (no registration required)
------ -------- ------ ---------------------------------------------------------------
2014Q2 USA 14th -- 11.4 http://wwwns.akamai.com/soti/soti_q214_figures.zip [akamai.com] (figure 22)
2013Q4 USA 10th -- 10.0 http://www.akamai.com/dl/akamai/akamai-soti-q413.pdf [akamai.com]
2013Q2 USA 8th -- 8.7 http://www.akamai.com/dl/documents/akamai_soti_q213.pdf [akamai.com]
2011Q2 USA 12th -- 5.8 http://tech4tea.com/blog/2011/10/24/the-state-of-the-internet-2q-2011-report-from-akamai/ [tech4tea.com]
2009Q2 USA 16th -- 4.6 http://www.websiteoptimization.com/bw/1010/ [websiteoptimization.com]
So it looks like there was a period of improvement but 2013 saw a reversal in the trend. At the very least this information suggests there is no correlation between ISPs being regulated under Title I and maintenance of high service levels.
What I would really like to see is something like average connection speed going back to circa 2000 to see if there was an inflection point after the 2005 reclassification to Title I. If anyone has consistent metrics like that, please post.
(Score: 1) by mgcarley on Friday November 14 2014, @12:24AM
Is it just me or are those results surprisingly linear in nature (speeds increase by about 1.2-1.3mbit/s per year).
While the increases are no doubt a good thing, they're not good enough - and certainly when we look at the increase as a percentage, year on year it looks worse and worse.
Founder & COO, Hayai. We're in India (hayai.in) & the USA (hayaibroadband.com) // Twitter: @mgcarley
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Wednesday November 12 2014, @03:29PM
1. Mr Wheeler is looking to return to his very lucrative position as a telecom lobbyist when the Obama administration ends a little over 2 years from now. He has a strong personal financial incentive to do exactly what AT&T, Comcast, Time Warner, etc want him to do, which is end net neutrality.
2. By making a public stand against the decision that he knows perfectly well Mr Wheeler is going to make if he can, Obama is insulating himself from the expected public backlash. And you can be quite certain that the telecom lobbying money that he's worried about will continue to pour in if the right decisions are made by the FCC. His public stance is great public relations, but he wouldn't have appointed Mr Wheeler to that position had he not fully expected this decision to be made in favor of the telecoms.
3. The Republican Party rule right now for anything from the Obama administration is "Whatever it is, I'm against it [youtube.com]". Since Obama is against it, they're for it. So Mr Wheeler is getting all sorts of pressure from Congress to end net neutrality.
They've been wanting to do this for years, and they know full well that nobody can stop them, really. And I don't think Obama is against it, really, no matter what he says (nor is Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, or anyone else on the Republican side).
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1) by mgcarley on Friday November 14 2014, @12:27AM
3. The Republican Party rule right now for anything from the Obama administration is "Whatever it is, I'm against it". Since Obama is against it, they're for it.
I have a feeling this is and has always been their position (based on little more than interactions on social media - as a non US citizen or resident who just happens to be in the US often, I'm more an outside observer than participant).
Granted, the same could probably be said for the Democrats: everything GWB did was wrong.
Yay for the 2 party system!
Founder & COO, Hayai. We're in India (hayai.in) & the USA (hayaibroadband.com) // Twitter: @mgcarley
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 12 2014, @04:01PM
He does have an efficient PR department as by now should be obvious to everybody.
The facts behind this conclusion are (from TFA):
“I am an independent agency,” Wheeler told them repeatedly, according to several officials.
The White House had no additional comment beyond the president’s statement Monday, in which he said the FCC is an independent agency and “ultimately this decision is theirs alone.”
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 12 2014, @05:18PM
Wait ... Wheeler is the agency? And I thought he'd just be its chairman ...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by fnj on Wednesday November 12 2014, @04:23PM
Clearly this isn't a Democrat/Republican issue, given that the chairman is a D and is flipping the President off. Nevertheless, for what it's worth, note that the only two R commissioners both come up for term expiration during the Obama administration - O'Rielly this year and Pai in 2016. If Mr. Obama can't get control of these boobs with all 5 commissioners Democrat appointees, that will be just sad.
Oh wait. "Only three commissioners may be members of the same political party." Crap. End of speculation.
Question: the President designates which commissioner will be the Chairman. Could he just up and give the current bum the boot in favor of a better Chairman?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 12 2014, @05:19PM
whatever you vote, there's only one workable future.
the previous pres. hired some guy from the stock market and not long after it went belly-up.
now we got another "works for money" guy working the gooverment show.
i'm not american but since the vector is pointing in one direction, the difference between D and R
is that Rs come out straight and the Ds just dress it up : )
(Score: 2) by timbim on Wednesday November 12 2014, @06:53PM
We should be voting G
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 12 2014, @11:39PM
> the previous pres. hired some guy from the stock market and not long after it went belly-up.
Actually he did not. The "guy" was Timothy Geithner and he had never worked for wallstreet or a wallstreet affiliate [wikipedia.org] when Obama hired him on to architect the bailout. He was president of the new york federal reserve and while that is technically a private job their only client is the us federal government. Unfortunately, 14 months after leaving his job with Obama, he took a job on wallstreet. So his hands aren't impeccably clean. But they aren't anywhere near as bad as you made the out to be.