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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Broadband providers made it clear this week: they wholeheartedly support net neutrality... but they want to overturn those pesky net neutrality rules and replace them with something that isn't so strict.
In fact, the way to truly protect net neutrality is to keep the Internet free of regulations, Internet provider CenturyLink wrote. "Keep the Internet Open and Free—Without Regulation" was the title of CenturyLink's blog post Wednesday.
"Reversing the FCC's 2015 Internet regulation order will do several positive things: Increase customer choice, spur innovation and investment, [and] create lasting consumer and competitive protections," CenturyLink wrote.
Comcast, meanwhile, accused net neutrality supporters of "creat[ing] hysteria."
This was part of a flurry of activity by ISPs and broadband lobby groups in response to yesterday's "Day of Action to Save Net Neutrality," a protest of the Federal Communications Commission plan to deregulate broadband and eliminate or replace net neutrality rules. All of the ISPs and lobby groups claimed to support net neutrality even though they have fought against the FCC's attempts to enforce rules against blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization.
The Day of Action resulted in more than 3.4 million e-mails to Congress and more than 1.6 million comments to the FCC, protest organizer Fight for the Future said yesterday. "More than 125,000 websites, people, artists, online creators, and organizations" signed up to participate in the protest, the group said.
The net neutrality docket now has 7.3 million comments.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday July 16 2017, @05:39AM (3 children)
I know a guy who brokered the deal for an ISP to get exclusive rights to a mid-sized Australian city's customers from 1996 to 2006(ish) - just his tiny slice of that deal was enormously valuable, like one small aspect of this wealth was: he never flew coach again, ever.
The utilities business doesn't have to be lock-up monopolies. Houston figured out how to allow a dozen or more electric service providers to compete for the right to service every home, one infrastructure, they shared the costs of maintenance and expansion, and the customers had real choice at rates slightly favorable when compared to nearby monopoly schemes.
Most of the utility monopolies are created by local politicians, elected officials - too bad that people can't manage to care enough to elect officials that will improve that situation.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Sunday July 16 2017, @09:13AM (2 children)
There are entire countries that follow the Houston model. Who owns the infrastructure in Houston then? the neighbor cooperation? municipality? state?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday July 16 2017, @11:45AM (1 child)
I never dug into it, should be easy enough to do via Google... two semi-interesting things about that, though:
Our house, and about a dozen neighboring houses, had huge backyards due to the addition of land from a utility easement. I surmise that the utilities were probably granted this land back when it was very low cost, held it, and decided they weren't going to need it so sold it off, presumably after it had appreciated considerably - much like the early railroads all over the country (world?) were granted much more land than they needed for tracks and were able to sell off much of it for profit after they increased its value by providing rail access.
Also, while we were there (2003-6), among the options of providers one could select a company that purchased their generation capacity from wind and solar sources, back then it was a slight (like 10%) premium cost over the conventional provider companies. Other options mostly centered around tiered payment plans, some with low cost low usage with higher costs beyond a threshold, others had a more of a flat rate, though most seemed to have some tiering. Other service rates minimum usage fees, reconnection charges, etc. varied, but not by life changing amounts.
All I remember was that, after choosing a provider, our call for service turn-on went just about the same as the single provider situation, except in this situation the power had actually been turned off before closing whereas every home we've bought in single provider markets they don't ever get around to shutting down service like they say they will. Otherwise we paid the bill and service was provided more or less the same as everywhere else. Never thought about it again after the initial choice.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 16 2017, @10:16PM
In North Texas the electricity network is maintained by a company called Oncor, and all plans have a fixed cost to cover connectivity and maintenance.