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from the so-long,-interwebs,-it-was-nice-knowing-you dept.
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission next month is planning a vote to kill Obama-era rules demanding fair treatment of web traffic and may decide to vacate the regulations altogether, according to people familiar with the plans.
The move would reignite a years-long debate that has seen Republicans and broadband providers seeking to eliminate the rules, while Democrats and technology companies support them. The regulations passed in 2015 bar broadband providers such as AT&T Inc. and Comcast Corp. from interfering with web traffic sent by Google, Facebook Inc. and others.
[...] Pai plans to seek a vote in December, said two people who asked not to be identified because the matter hasn't been made public. As the head of a Republican majority, he is likely to win a vote on whatever he proposes.
[...] The agency declined to comment on the timing of a vote. "We don't have anything to report at this point," said Tina Pelkey, a spokeswoman for the commission.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by edIII on Thursday November 16 2017, @09:40PM (3 children)
Yes, a good monopoly. Meaning, that the monopoly *could* be run by the state in a non-profit fashion. That can be muddied up a bit with providing private companies contracts to provide these monopoly services, but that is a different problem.
At this point, sending a packet is an important as a telephone call (they're nearly indistinguishable now), as important as electricity and water. It's become fundamental infrastructure no different than an interstate highway, and in the same way, has tremendous consequences with the economy. The interstate highways are what allowed our growth in the first place and fueled our economy, and the ability to send packets nearly instantaneously created the economy surrounding the Internet.
I'm absolutely for ALL municipalities being able to roll out fiber, wireless, whatever, to provide infrastructure for citizens to send packets to each other. Internet will be free to use for all who can connect up wirelessly, but rate limited. Enough to check email, use government websites, banking, etc., but not enough for HD video. Wired connections to residences and buildings will be paid for by taxes. All connections are rate limited, unless you want to pay extra to the city for more bandwidth. If you actually pay for Internet, you're really just paying for more Internet faster.
Since this is at a municipality level, there will be tremendous bargaining power with corporations. Netflix already behaves pretty well, and pioneered their own CDN to assist small ISPs with Netflix traffic. Most likely a slam dunk that Netflix would cooperate with the municipality and install enough CDNs to prevent costly traffic that transits out of the municipalities network. Same can go with other major service providers. The municipality will provide the connections and rack space, but the corporations provide their own equipment and maintenance.
At this point AT&T can kiss our fucking asses. We can eliminate their easements, and basically, kick them out of the municipality. If they want revenue, they can negotiate a city at a time to provide either local networks, or transit capability to other networks. We can negotiate with the big boys to provide transit for our packets outside of the municipal network. Nothing says we shouldn't have more than one either, or be multi-homed.
I would think Net Neutrality would exist at that point. Any ISP attempting to get their grubby hands on the packets and play favorites will find that they can't service the last mile anymore, and dealing with a city at a time and its bargaining power precludes them from traffic shaping, or price gouging for decent service. They literally have no power over the packets anymore.
Anywhere two adjacent cities can decide to create fiber between them, allows them to create cheaper peering and transit agreements.
I would love it if cities took over delivering packets.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 16 2017, @09:53PM (2 children)
There's no reason to suspect that a monopoly (especially one founded on income-by-decree and political whim) will perform well in the long run.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 16 2017, @10:11PM (1 child)
Lol, cause I sure LOVE all the innovation my current choice of ISPs give me. Ancient DSL or ancient cable, wheeee. Oh, and what about the billions we gave telecoms to put down fiber? Riiiiight, long live the private corps! *cough* I mean HAIL HYDRA!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 16 2017, @10:30PM
By making a municipal ISP, you're removing even the fantasy of some kind of responsibility to the market.