Proponents and enemies of net neutrality can stop guessing what the new head of the FCC will do. He has made it abundantly clear that he will move to dismantle the rule.
“It has become evident that the FCC made a mistake,” Pai said at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, according to a copy of his prepared remarks provided to CNNTech. “Our new approach injected tremendous uncertainty into the broadband market. And uncertainty is the enemy of growth.”
Reality!
Thank God we have someone that understands market realities and how consumer choice is better facilitated when agencies get out of the way and let firms compete.
According to CNN:
The net neutrality rules, approved by the FCC in 2015 amid an outpouring of online support, let the agency regulate the Internet as a public utility, placing greater restrictions on broadband providers.
The rules prevent Internet providers like Comcast (CCV) and AT&T (T, Tech30) from deliberately speeding up or slowing down traffic from specific websites and apps. In short, the rules are intended to prevent providers from playing favorites.
Bullshit!
Except there was no “outpouring of online support when people understood the issue and the uncertainties it placed on ISPs. It existed based solely on how the question was asked and what pony the respondent thought he/she’d get by supporting it. What it did, however, do was to stifle innovation, expansion, competition and relationship-building within the industry’s varying sectors that would reduce costs. It was going to retard progress that had been made, it would have imposed content restrictions and requirements and it would have increased costs for everybody downstream of the regulators.
Mark another one down in “garbage that the current admin has started the process of fixing in a way libertarians should be satisfied with”. I know it pains some people, but its the truth.
Good.
The public utility laws don’t even work well for public utilities.
UCS bringing the firsts
I’m home sick from work. I have nothing better to do than sit on the internet waiting for the cold meds to kick in.
No judgement here. I regularly go hide in a conference room.
I for one was very happy when I heard that the Trumpinator made that troublemaker, Pai, head of the FCC.
Prog 1: Oh, muh neutrality, muh neutrality!
Prog 2: Do you know what that means?
Prog 1: No, do you?
Prog2: No.
Prog 1: But Republicans like it and it’s Trump’s fault!
Prog 2: Oh, muh neutrality, muh neutrality!
Well at least Pai is one appointment who seems to be living up to my optimism. Would love to Devos go the same route at DOE.
But Jeff Sessions might be having non-libertarian thoughts!!!
I’m sure he is. Just like every dickhead AG we had before him. But when was the last time the head of a federal agency set out to dismantle a huge, liberty-killing federal bureaucratic rule? I guess you could say DeVos. But I mean before this year.
The farm bill almost went away in the 90s.
Which is why you can’t ramp down, you have to go cold turkey.
55 mph
Not even close to this. This stops the government cold from regulating the entire internet. That merely allowed states to collect federal handouts when they chose to raise their speed limits higher than the DOT thought made sense.
Yep. Sessions, walls, pot, tariffs…
Trump is a boon to liberty.
We’ve always had borders.
Enforcing laws as written rather than arbitrarily based on geography means bad laws get repealed, not selectively enforced.
Tariffs…you got me there. Expanding our already bad tariff program is not very libertarian.
You know what other country built a wall?
Vatican City?
See? Pure evil.
Mexico
Oh snap!
He isn’t, but I can celebrate every step he makes towards liberty while still criticizing every step he takes away from it.
Hit and miss.
IMO, the hits outweigh the misses.
But that’s just, like, my opinion, man.
At least Trump is a mixed bag. We’re coming off a long stretch where silver linings were very occasional and very fleeting.
And always unintentional.
Oh C’mon Frank. Cutting regulations, having govt defer to citizens instead of itself (a huge one), cutting taxes, putting american interests first (some of which is misguided but not all) putting government nut-cutters in charge of agencies, repatriating trillions of american dollars, death to the ACA….there is a lot to like about this guy. If you want bacon you have to put up with pigshit.
He has loosened the ratchet in a lot of ways. Who else would have done that?
So, IOW, he’s doing all the things I would expect any Republican to do. And for every pro liberty thing he does he’ll do one anti-liberty thing…JUST LIKE A REPUBLICAN.
W, his dad and Reagan did some good things too. They certainly weren’t libertarians or champions of liberty.
I’m not thrilled about Sessions, but with MJ he seems like he’s just not going to be any better than the previous AG.
Now if they can take the next step and get rid of the rules they have in place that allow providers to monopolize markets. Let the hate flow. Do it, strike them down and their conversion to the dark side will be complete.
Comcast hardest hit. May they rot in eternal hell.
Unfortunately, the rules that let the likes of Comcast operate as near-monopolies are not likely to go away, so we will have Comcast prioritizing or otherwise fiddling with internet traffic. It will be interesting to see how this works out.
I don’t know why you single out Comcast. They’re no worse than Verizon, AT&T, or Time Warner.
That’s all localized. For instance, where I live, there are several providers. (I ought to know, the boxes are all in my back yard and I’ve got those fuckers traipsing through there all the time to service them.). Rates are a hell of a lot more reasonable than anywhere I’ve lived that legislated a monopoly.
Get rid of local regulatory capture and the market will go crazy with innovation and consumer costs will plummet.
You’re lucky. Even 2 choices would help if we had that here.
we have 2, technically. Comcast can get you very fast speeds. The competition? they have pockets of coverage in some neighborhoods.
I know a guy who was promised a rate by them only to be called back and told they oversold in that ‘hood. He got a good deal for the downgrade though.
I really don’t want to go over this again…BUT, it is a rare rural market in the lower 48 that doesn’t have multiple choices. The issue is, when a subsidized option exists, the costs of the other choices cause them to not be considered at all. I am willing to bet three cat butts that you have more than 2 choices. Tell me your “general” location.
Baltimore. There’s your rarity. One choice. Comcast.
No wifi providers? Hell, even in Tucson, that’s an option.
Not out here in the sticks.
Not Exactly:
Alliance Telecom Corp
XO Communications (bought by Verizon)
Verizon (Land and Cell, two different technologies so really two different choices)
Wild Blue
Dish (of course)
Port Networks (just browsing these guys look alright)
Believe Broadband (a little pricey and they look sketchy)
Baltimore Fiber
Quantum Internet and Telephone
I mean I can keep going, looks like there may be a few more.
Folks always think they only have 1 or 2 choices and I don’t know why.
heh. What libertarians say for $200 Alex.
lol
And before anybody spouts off about latency, I can grantee you that vast majority of time you will not have any issues what so ever…Unless you are soloing Onyxia at 5:30 in the afternoon you’ll be fine, and EVEN then you may only wipe twice.
I never had a problem with Onyxia with my warlock or priest, but for some reason I had a much harder time as a rogue.
*shrug*
At what level?
I tried a solo at 55 with my affliction loc…sucked
Would have been 60 and 70 lvl cap days. I haven’t played in a while, my brother pops back in every now and then.
DoT warlocks were awesome most of the time, but they got turned down after a while. I still loved my affliction setup.
my rogue was subtly, so i just didn’t have the dps for stuff like that at the time. also, no heals.
I live in Baltimore City and in my neighborhood there are no other high speed internet providers than Comcast. I should know. The reason I think I only have one choice is because I only have one choice.
You say so chief…All I am sayin’ is being in this industry and building networks for over 20 years I know Baltimore is covered. No skin off my back but I would encourage you to take a look at Wifi, Cell, Satellite, Business class providers, re-sellers, and hell even laser.
Dude, I just told you that in my neighborhood in Baltimore there is no access to high speed internet other than Comcast. I would know, I’ve lived here for 3 years and know plenty of people here who are just as frustrated with it as I am. If you don’t believe me, you’re perfectly welcome to come here and see for yourself. Baltimore is not just Harbor East or Inner Harbor.
I have Comcast or I can get DSL through the phone company.
The local phone company makes Comcast seem like the bestest company ever. So only one choice.
If I lived closer to town, I could get Windstream and Time-Warner or Insight.
Where ya live Bob. I can do the same for you as I did for Hyp
Vine Grove KY… where my cell phone barely works.
ISPKY.com
Brandenburg Telecom
CenturyLink (sorry)
Comcast
Windstream
HuighsNet
Excede
Charter (Spectrum)
ATT Uverse (supposedly)
Wild Blue as always
Dish
Aero Communications
The only thing you did for Hyp is to tell me that you don’t know what you’re talking about when it comes to my area of Baltimore. I’ll be off Comcast the same day that there is an alternative. First Verizon told me they’re bringing FIOS to my neighborhood in 2017. Now they’re saying 2018.
Also, these are different classes of service.
A gamer is not going to want satellite or call it a competitive option in any way. The latencies are just unusable.
And yeah, CenturyLink can go fuck itself. A company that damaged itself so badly with its business practices that it had to change its name to distance itself from the wrecked brand is not really a contender.
As is usually the case, what I am hearing is not “There are not options” but “I don’t like the options”
I am not debating merits of the choices, only that there are many more than 1.
I pre-emptively addressed the latency issue above.
Also, several of those I listed are fttn or fttc providers, some are re-sellers. The rest do wireless. If you want 100Mbps and your coax doesn’t do it for you then expect 200$ a month, get fuill duplex 100Mbps and an SLA of 4 hours.
ATT Uverse (supposedly)
Probably not supposedly, at least for their DSL non-FTTH version of U-verse. KY is former BellSouth territory.
And yeah, CenturyLink can go fuck itself. A company that damaged itself so badly with its business practices that it had to change its name to distance itself from the wrecked brand is not really a contender.
? CenturyLink rebranded itself (from CenturyTel, which isn’t that different) after buying Embarq (Sprint’s spun off local exchange business). Are you referring to Qwest, which CenturyLink also purchased, but operated for around ten years after their accounting scandals with no name change?
Yep, I’m shitting on Qwest, and most deservedly.
Shit on, my friend!
Queen Anne’s County Maryland, specifically Kent Island.
We have Atlantic Broadband for Cable Internet.
Verizon offers DSL with a top speed of 750kbps (about 1% of the speed of Atlantic Broadband)
And Satellite providers if you can afford them
And that is it.
You probably have Verizon Cell too. I can’t believe you don’t have either a microwave or wimax/wifi solution…if that’s the case, how much time you got? We will spin one up and make a killing. Hell, maps show we have LoS for laser too (last resort of course).
I tell you what, you spin up a high speed internet connection here in my neighborhood and I’ll be on it the same day. Good luck with that.
I am excited by this challenge. Sloop, send Hyp my email address please. I want to see if I can get you more than one extra quote for HSI at your actual address. If not I will not donate 20$ to TSTSNBN, but if so you will not donate 20$ to TSTSNBN. Deal?
/seriously, I want to take a look. I have a good friend in Baltimore proper and he has killa HSI and not with Comcast.
Yah, ok. Thanks for the effort. Verizon can’t pull it off in this area although they’ve tried for years. I wish you lots of luck.
If you two can keep your dicks in your pants long enough, the loser can donate the money here.
OK, I sent the email off, Bandit. Hyperion is on his own now. Although I’d be interested in finding out how this plays out. (As well as collecting the donation of the loser HERE.)
My dick is right where it belongs…firmly placed in my wife’s purse, right next to my balls.
And I said NOT donate. If you lazy malooks ever get a DONATE FUCKING HERE button up we may renegotiate.
just sayin’
thanks sloop, and I am serious Hyp, send your locaiton (can be general but make it close), I will see what I can arrange as far as alternative quotes. Not saying you will like them. But if you do anything online for work you may be able to get some help.
Fucking Verizon stopped laying down fiber-optic cable about a block from my house.
Some kind of ultra-high-capacity interstate fiber line got run past Pater Dean’s ranch in the middle of nowhere, TX. He somehow got tied into it (I’m not asking questions), and now gets some kind of stupid-fast internet – hundreds of Mbps.
You have told this story…i liked it first time…still want to know how he got the splice/who he bribed
You and me both.
Still not asking.
“Hey, why do we get this faint degradation from near that ranch?”
“Beats me.”
Aye, this is what leaves a bad taste in my mouth about backing off the net neutrality rule. It’s not that markets don’t do better when they’re less regulated, obviously I agree with that sentiment. It’s that there is no real competition in most markets.
I’m not convinced that this is the best move at the current time, even if it’s an easy one to make, and would have preferred to see the current crony system dismantled before removing these restrictions. I absolutely do think Comcast, for example, is going to fuck people over. Lest one forget, Comcast was specifically throttling torrents over other content, undoubtedly at the behest of the MPAA/RIAA and their own crony system. Now Comcast itself is a content provider, and they’ll have every incentive to fuck over companies like Netflix and extort the users for additional cash for access.
Again, I think removing regulation is great. But this doesn’t look like controlled demolition to me, and that’s something we should be taking into account.
* le sigh *
I can see I am going to have to address this. When I have time I will be making two, maybe three submissions to the Hoard.
1. Cyber Security Primer for people over the age of 50.
2. Generational Collectivism and some of the merits of the argument
3. FUCKING TELECOM GOD DAMNIT!!!
I’m not over 50, and have been in tech a long time, so it’s not like I don’t understand how all of this works (and I’m not sure what cyber security has to do with content agnosticism). I’m no fan of “generational collectivism” if I understand what you’re implying correctly, and the FCC has acquired a lot of horseshit cruft for a long time. And, big surprise, telecom is a fucking mess.
Regulations don’t have to be removed in the reverse order of how they were enacted. More importantly, one can see that the telecom megacorps praise this decision. When you see both the idiot socialist proggies and the telecoms screaming their heads off at the same time, then you’ll know we’re actually headed in the right direction. Republican crony protectionists are equally as bad as Democrat crony protectionists.
I do not think this move is going to create any competition whatsoever, despite Pai insisting that it will. I’m not arguing that the regulatory bureaucracy should continue to grow and try to cure its ills with more regulation. That is lunacy. This move is like giving the system a haircut to cure brain cancer buried deep in its skull. I’m actually not even sure the FCC can solve this alone because many of the problems, like Sloopy mentioned, are actually local. For example, local power companies getting blocked from the broadband market by entrenched providers, despite the tech having been around for quite a while and matured greatly.
Telecom is particularly sticky because its whole existence creates an artificial monopoly through government taking of land (easements). Nobody likes Sloopy’s problem of multiple companies having access to their property to service lines, and proliferation of competition would obviously make that much worse. On the other hand, nobody (but the telecoms) likes having only one or two companies that can just agree not to compete, divvy it all up and fuck everyone with said artificial monopoly six ways from Sunday.
The breakup of Ma Bell clearly did little to stop telecom from coalescing back into nightmare anti-competitive corps. Now they’re merging with content providers as well, and that is not a good sign given their crony impulses.
We all want the same things, regardless of how we believe they should be done. We want lots of competition to keep these fucks in line, the low prices that come with that, content agnostic service, etc.
(and I’m not sure what cyber security has to do with content agnosticism)
Nothing, As far as I know, I was just listing my current backlog of soon to be broken promises.
I’m no fan of “generational collectivism” if I understand what you’re implying correctly
I think you do BUT that is why I want to write it, I have heard some very interesting takes lately. This will be more of a thought piece.
The breakup of Ma Bell clearly did little to stop telecom from coalescing back into nightmare anti-competitive corps.
This is, in my view, very shortsighted and lacking in perspective regarding the industry. I hear this ALL THE TIME. Colbert did a funny with it. It simply isn’t the case. The Beasts still exist, they do still eat each other (you don’t have to tell me, I have a near infamous line about a part of my past [ I was hired by MFS, I Sat in Brooks HQ, Next to WilTel people, paid by WorldCom, with a badge that said MCI]).
But the industry is in so much flux right now, there are technologies and avenues of consumption these old idiots can’t even wrap their decrepit minds around. It is hilarious to watch the death throws of these dinosaurs. ALL the FCC does is ensure their death is slower. If you elminated the FCC tomorrow access, technology, and awesomeness would explode.
fukin tags…FIRST SENTENCE IN EACH PARA IS A QUOTE OF YOURS
* walk over to swissy, kicks cat in butt.*
So were you a fan of local loop unbundling back when that mattered more to the broadband market? Obviously cable doesn’t give a fuck and ended up getting regulated differently from telephone. It was my opinion that it did something to unfuck the mess. There was a proliferation of services and the big monopolies were not happy about it.
And also, what of using antitrust to bust the big ones up or block them from merging to control larger territories? You seem to think that had a desirable effect in increasing competition, and it did seem to for a while, but would you punk-bust Comcast down to several corps to help alleviate the problem of them controlling so much copper and fiber?
UNE/EEL was not nearly the boon they expected for the reasons we would expect, incentives. It WAS a dereg step in the right direction but again I am for 100% eliminating the FCC in its entirety.
Anti-trust is also mostly political BS. With no FCC there would be no reason to attack Comcast, Hell JUST LOOK ABOVE. Hyperion is NOT the only person who would like to see Comcast be ejected into orbit by Elon. Without the (and it is only a thread holding it now) MSO protective web (see what I did there?) they would need to adapt pretty damn quick. Big thing for them though is they can write a check for anything they think they need.
I can’t say I completely agree with the complete dissolution of the FCC. One place I think that there is a valid cause for regulation is spectrum allocation. The tragedy of the commons is still an issue in that circumstance, and all-out spectrum wars would serve nobody’s interests. As for how to keep that from being its own crony mess, I’m not sure, but I will put forth the observation that wireless tends to be far less cluster-fucked than wired services.
I thought Netflix’s ISP was the one actually fucking them over, not the providers to their customers.
Akamai/Level3
Yes, this will be in my post if I ever write it. I was a party to that whole mess. It is fascinating.
DO IT!
*waves banner with “Contributor” on it*
It’s a great story. I read up on it a while ago. Please write it.
Akamai/Level3? Wasn’t Cogent Netflix’s provider that was doing the throttling?
(Thought you were a Colorado denizen. Out in St Louis for a time? re: your multibadge experience above)
CO yes STL yes, and Plymouth MN yes. Plus some short stints in other areas.
Telecom, it be what it be.
That’s a different issue than what I’m referring to. Comcast’s got its fingers in Hulu and also has its own web content distribution. It also owns NBC.
There is little to stop it from deciding to fast-track Hulu or its own services and fuck Netflix unless the consumer coughs up for the extortion. And there’s every incentive for the MPAA/RIAA to pick winners and force everyone else to eat shit, which is obviously its own mess.
Point is, Comcast is not just a telecom anymore, and it’s everything libertarians abhor in a capitalist system. It’s exactly what socialists point to and call “capitalism” when it’s actually a government protected crony entity that grew as big as it has specifically because of its legal entrenchment.
Compared to further government intrusion into the market, I’ll take it. Yeah it sucks, but at least there’s a hope of rectifying it properly. If net neutrality were to become full force regulation, there would be no unfucking the system.
I obviously believe that the government should stay the fuck out of regulating the Internet, but given how telecom is already regulated it is in that position anyway and fucking us from the top and the bottom at the same time. It’s just being done indirectly.
As I mentioned above, I’d prefer to see an efficient, controlled demolition of this shit. The consumer should always be foremost in the minds of the regulators as they choose which regulations get taken out first. This is because the ball has been entirely in the court of the providers for far too long and everyone suffers for it.
I cut down my services, bought my own modem, reduced the speeds I pay for, and Comcast just keeps finding new ways to reduce my service options so I end up paying what they want me to. That is not how a company operating in a free market behaves. They should be afraid of losing my business to a competitor when they jerk me around.
That’s not an unreasonable concern, but I don’t think that leaving the Net Neutrality rules in place would make it any more likely for the local cronyism that prevents real competition to go away. Where I am, as is the case in most municipalities, the right to lay cable is sold to a limited number of companies, usually one (Comcast in our case), with the ostensible goal of preventing a cat’s cradle of cabling through the town. Same with phone (Verizon for us). You can buy from resellers, but they have to lease bandwidth from one of those two providers. That doesn’t change with Net Neutrality, and that’s your real monopoly.
Comcast recently added a Netflix app directly to my cable box. It is very well integrated with voice search and everything. It seems like they think people will pay to keep their X1 boxes and pay for Netflix if its well integrated and easy to use. The voice search is pretty nice.
I can hear the wailing of reddit and slashdot from here.
Yup
Remember when liberals thought of a level playing field in terms of equality of opportunity rather than equality of outcome?
Well, neither do I. But a man can dream that they’re not all hidden socialists, can’t he?
It’s “There oughta be a law…” writ large
If you ever hear someone say this IRL, just reply “There is.”
They’re hidden?
Chortle. YRO. I haven’t seen that in probably 10 years, and it’s still ridiculous.
At one time, slashdot was actually about tech and science. Now it’s just thinly veiled marketing and basement dwelling whiners.
All I remember was GNU/GPL zealots screaming bloody murder about anyone that enjoyed a Micro$oft experience. After gutter dwelling at -1 for a while, I lost interest in it entirely about a decade ago. Not before I bought some overpriced crap at ThinkGeek!
There was some good stuff at ThinkGeek. I bought a decent FM transmitter that lasted for years. Wish I could find a replacement that lasts as long as that one did.
Where’s the “thinly veiled” part? One of the links on the front page is Sponsored Content. I still have my account, and I think it even still has Excellent Karma. Too bad there hasn’t been a story worth reading on it in years, and the comments have fallen to the SJWs.
Net Neutrality aimed to…
It aimed to something. Ok. But what did it DO?
So there are a set of rules granting those companies monopolies in their markets, guaranteeing that their service and pricing is going to suck. The solution is NEVER to undo that damage, but to just pile on more damage. Now we’ll regulate exactly how they have to treat their IP traffic, that’ll fix it!
Fuck you, cut regulations.
lol. Beat me to it.
ATT is not granted a monopoly. MSOs have monopolies on their territories for coaxial service only. Aside from local considerations, there is no federal rule outlawing another provider of a non-coax nature.
Naturally, when the whole industry is a cronyist, cartelized clusterfuck, the statists will just say, “Oh jeez, it’s clear that a free market in Internet service just won’t work! Let’s give up on this horrible experiment in unfettered capitalism and give the Internet back to The People*!”
* The People = the government
Irrelevant, but amusing that this exists: Sloppy Inca Roads
Jesus. I broke into a cold sweat fearing it would be another of Kiz*** K**row’s retarded videos.
Thank God it wasn’t.
Yeah well, imposing regulations that make it advantageous to big conglomerates is what caused the problem in the first place.
Fuck off, slaver.
I hope Pai is resolute on this.
I’d add that the irony of all that is that it was precisely the Googles and the Netflixes of the world that ISPs were trying to figure out how to respond to. These guys are bandwidth hogs in a way small entrepreneurs don’t have the volume to be.
From some other reading I was doing, this guy hates the FCC because he was the interface between AT&T (and maybe Verizon) and the FCC for several years. His view seems to be that these guys can’t regulate their own body temperature without 1000 pages of documentation and 18 months of meetings.
I used to work in telecom regulation. I can vouch for this.
The POTs system is the perfect example of the endstate of regulation. It’s next to impossible to get anything done without 16 layers of bureaucracy. And they want to bring that insanity to the internet. It’s beyond belief.
Did you make your comment intra-LATA or inter-LATA? I need to know so I know how much I can charge.
Whoa I remember those. Mostly because my town was not part of the Bell behemoth so there was a map of our own little LATA at the beginning of the phone book and everything beyond that was long distance.
You grew up in Rochester, didn’t you? (I believe Connecticut was an outlier, too.)
Dad worked for Ma Bell for 30 years, so I learned odd things like that.
And of course, there was the long-distance rates changing at 5PM and 11PM.
Congestion pricing.
And weekend rates. But only until Sunday at 5pm, when rates went up to the weeknight rate.
I once had a fractional T1 line that carried my internet and phone lines from Verizon. Their site equipment was so bad that I after multiple replacements I finally gave up and told Verizon to cancel my T1 and move my phone lines back to POTs. I’d pick DSL or cable for internet instead.
So the Verizon moron entered the cancellation notice but not the transfer on the phone lines. My phone service was promptly cut off and the phone numbers which the business had had for 25 years were up for grabs. I spent hours upon hours trying to get a hold of someone, anyone that could resolve the issue, but due to the nature of the POTs bureaucracy it was impossible. I finally paid an attorney to make and emergency filing with the State Corporation Commission and call the Vice President of Verizon personally to get the service turned back on.
I went to cable and VOIP and have never had a problem with customer service since.
Weren’t there days when the actual physical telephone was like the mailbox in that you technically didn’t own it?
Not technically. The phones were stamped Bell System Property (or the independent if you lived in one of those areas) because the phone company owned them(*). The Carterfone decision allowed people to connect their own phones and other telecom devices, although it was slow to open up and many (most) people just continued to rent their phones from the phone company. That leasing business went to AT&T at Divestiture and continued for years. Every so often some newspaper would run an article about how much some old granny paid in monthly fees over the phone’s lifetime.
(*) Customers could purchase decorative phones such as the Mickey Mouse phone but still had to rent the internals. I can’t remember if the guts were installed separately or not.
Huh. The leases are still around. And more than I would have thought.
I have a a copy of this on my bookshelf.
I love the Amazon comments: “tediously written”, “dense”, “hard to follow”.
As if telecom regulations were written to be simple.
Mike O’Reilly is also a fan of markets. I don’t know how Pai and O’Reilly got to the top of the FCC, but I”m glad they’re there.
LOL I misread that a Tim O’Reilly for a second.
He’d probably be good, too.
From the beginning, net neutrality was a solution in search of problem. The useful idiots took up the cause en masse and the content providers were more than willing to take advantage of the situation to get a leg up on the tech infrastructure companies.
NPR mouthpieces have been losing its mind over this FCC Chairman over the last couple of weeks. It’s pathetic.
The solution to an overregulated market is to overregulate moar. It is known.
Well, how else are you going to have an excuse to hire flocks of new bureaucrats? Those millenials needs jobs!
Regulations are like TOP MEN.
We just haven’t found the right ones or spent enough resources to make them work.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t cable television require dedicated “fast lanes” in order to function? Many people, if not most, get their cable and internet over the same line, yet the cable must be capable of streaming hi-def video at any time of the day without interuption. Under true “net neutrality” my torrents should be given the same priority as my neighbor’s HBO, and I’d be willing to bet that this wouldn’t go over so well with the young leftists who tend to support this nonsense.
The idealism of net neutrality falls apart when you get into technical necessity such as what you mentioned. Different forms of traffic have different requirements e.g. video game traffic needs to move small volume with minimal delay, and HD video/audio streams need to move large volume with room for a lot of delay (buffering).
Yeah, the fact that data throttling potentially ran afoul of net neutrality was the reason that data providers had started to move away from unlimited plans. Interesting that within a month after this guy taking over, Verizon brings back unlimited data with data throttling at 22 GB or whatever it is.
I think the Verizon move had more to do with T-Mobile and ATT bringing back unlimited plans.
They brought theirs back with data throttling as well, so perhaps just the idea of the previous administration going bye bye influenced that? I don’t knew that for a fact, but I do know that the inability to throttle extreme data users on unlimited plans due to net neutrality roles was a big issue for wireless.
It’s a huge issue for wireless. Some schmuck who’s torrenting terabytes of porn can suck up the bandwidth and degrade QOS for everyone else.
With the ability to throttle, the service providers have to have data caps in order to dissuade that behavior.
David Angelo pointed that out on his eEconomics video on net neutrality, essentially saying “we already have fast lanes and no one gives a shit because they don’t notice them! And here’s why they need to be that way regardless…”
You know, I watched all of those videos once upon a time, so It’s highly probable that I stole the idea from him. It’s too bad that Angelo only puts out, like, one video a year because I remember them being very entertaining and enlightening.
Was it an FCC decision (regulation vs legislation) on the point to go full digital on TV back a decade or so ago? I remember some upgrade issues, etc…..kinda dropped off my radar (I think I was in Iraq or Korea).
I’m going to play devil’s advocate here based on an argument I’ve heard a number of times on This Week in Tech. The ideal solution would be competition between ISPs, but we don’t really have that, and we’re not likely to get it. Most people have a choice of 2 providers at best. 3 if you count satellite providers, but that’s not much of a choice. Allowing Big ISP to make fast-lane deals with content providers like Netflix or Amazon probably won’t hurt the incumbents so much, but it will stifle future innovation by creating barriers to entry to new firms.
So in summary, the ideal solution is competition at the ISP level, but that would probably take the shape of more regulations forcing the incumbents to open access to their tubes. This is unlikely to happen, so Net Neutrality is the next best solution.
Discuss.
Disclaimer: I’m not necessarily convinced by the argument. However, I see the logic in it, and it’s the best argument I’ve seen in favor of Net Neutrality.
The ideal solution would be competition between ISPs, but we don’t really have that, and we’re not likely to get it.
Why not? Even assuming the cable monopolies persist, why can’t wifi or something like it provide competition.
Hell, awhile ago they were working on using the power lines to carry data. Not sure where that is, but still.
If you are interested in having competition for ISPs, then going to federal net neutrality rules pretty much guarantees you won’t get. Regulatory capture, barriers to entry, etc.
Broadband over power lines
Don’t know where power line networks stand in terms of Internet access, but I run all the network-enabled stuff in my living room over powerline ethernet because the WiFi signal wasn’t stable enough for my Steam Link to look purdy, and it works great.
We don’t live in a fair world. The government trying to make it so always seems to make it worse. It’s not like the government isn’t picking winners and losers and stifling innovation.
The internet was not screaming out for any need of regulation.
It’s my impression that most major ISPs are the beneficiaries of regulatory capture at the local level, through the restriction of right-of-way building access. Removing theose barriers would probably go a long way in promoting competition.
Also, why are 2-3 options not considered a valid choice? How many options must be available before government interference is no longer necessary? It must be noted that none-of-the-above is a choice as well. Despite what NN supporters may claim, internet access is not essential to survival and it certainly isn’t a right.
Are you talking ISPs or deodorant?
I’m sure Bernie would love for there to be one state-owned ISP providing 56k to every household in the country. For “free”, of course.
My understanding is that the ISPs wanted to make fast-lane deals with the Netflix or Amazons of the world because their activity was so bandwidth intensive. The idea is that they’d charge for the additional service and use the funds to finance additional capacity. .
If we just put the Gov in charge, they’ll make sure our torrents are at max speeds!
If we just put the Gov in charge, they’ll make sure our torrents are at max allowable speeds!
56K for everyone!
Dude ISDN is going to smoke that when it comes out in 2056. 128K!
Nothing quite like downloading porn at 9600 bps.
Unfortunately, I’m old enough to remember when 9600 baud was the absolute shit.
I think I started with 2400 on my first computer. A 25mhz hp with HUGE 20mb hard drive.
My first modem
Incidentally, the guy who invented the C64 lives not too far from me. That was back when the engineer had to design absolutely everything in the computer.
I had a rich friend in middle school who had a TRS-80 and a phone modem. Visiting his house was like being in WarGames or something.
The 2400 baud modem that you actually put the telephone hand set directly into?
The modem card had a phone jack you could plug into.
I was a C-64 user. My first modem was 300 baud. 1200 baud was the next step-up and seemed like lightning in comparison.
I still remember (or not?!?!) reading some article in the 80s saying that 1200 baud was the absolute max due to line noise.
Swoon… I started with the VIC-20, then moved up to the 64 a couple of years later. Good times were had, staying up all night playing Below The Root and Infernal Runner.
And saving computer programs on cassette tapes.
I have fond memories of (a) watching naughty pictures raster a . . . line . . . at. . . . a. . . time on a phone modem and (b) watching them pix just pop right up when I got an ISDN line.
For you younguns, this was before we had the moving pictures on our computer boxes.
One of my ring tones on my phone is the old phone modem oooeeeeooo sound. The old farts all recognize it, but there’s a lot of people who apparently have never heard a phone modem groping for a handshake.
When I was a kid, my Dad fixed computers for Sperry/Univac. I remember going to the local Bell Phone with him one weekend, and walking through a large room full of computers. They probably had less power & memory than my Samsung phone.
Also, tons of punch cards.
Wait, where was I? Get off my lawn, you damn kids!
In my freshman year of college, way back in 1995, I had two classes that were in an “experimental”, for the time, class building. The building had computers connected to the internet by T1 lines, which at the time were ~1.5mbps. Couldn’t look at porn on them, but the speed at which everything loaded was just so shocking for the time. I didn’t get anything high speed on my “home” computer until 1998, when I had transferred schools and had an ethernet connection in my dorm suite.
Right now I have 75mbps internet and feel that’s too slow. Probably upgrading to 105mbps soon.
I worked for an ISP in that time period. Our uplink to our upstream provider was a single T1.
I live out in the sticks and have a faster connection that now, although not that much faster. I wish I had something in the 75Mbps range.
Kids today can’t even tell a 1200/2400 tone train vs. a 9600-14.4K tone train. Don’t even get me started about fax.
” a phone modem groping for a handshake.”
This made me giggle. Thank you.
Minitel for all!
Oh boy, that Other Site is fun today. Rife with trolls, and has articles on Muslim Libertarians, the trans-wrestler, and multiple Trump articles.
It’s a total shitshow.
I really miss the old TSTSNBN. It was fun.
But I love that this place came into existence. Thanks to everyone involved in it. This place and Reddit are the only sites I ever come to on the internet nowadays.
I’m already preferring the more broad topic discussion here. Having the more chaotic interests of different people from different backgrounds tends to make a more *gasp* diverse set of reading materials in comparison to The Other Site’s clear editorial agenda and narrow DC perspective.
agreed! I also truly enjoy that we seem to really respect each others interests/fields.
We aim to please….sort of.
Oh, never change, Suderman.
He probably should have stuck to writing Star Wars fan fiction.
If that was an attempt to make a dig at TSTSNBN, i assure you = they are writing a piece about this issue at the very moment, and i am confident they will reveal why its actually a bad thing from a libertarian perspective, because …. intentions, probably. Because its JUST WHAT THE CORPORATIONS WANT, which should concern all of us… or something.
Doherty wrote a post that was essentially ‘If Trump does something that good for liberty, it’s by accident, because he doesn’t hold liberty as a virtue byprinciple.’ While that’s true, it’s still a lot better than someone who hates it as a principle.
Pretty much every advancement in human freedom came not out of some high falootin principle on the part of the despots/tyrants/rulers of the day, but because they felt getting out of the way was more advantageous than keeping control.
Do you think LBJ switched from sabotaging attempts to repeal Jim Crow to promoting it out of the goodness of his racist little heart?
Should have been “does anybody think LBJ”…
Sorry, Baked Penguin, that question wasn’t intended to you specifically.
“Pretty much every advancement in human freedom came not out of some high falootin principle on the part of the despots/tyrants/rulers of the day, but because they felt getting out of the way was more advantageous than keeping control.”
I would add that almost all of the improvements in human prosperity came out of someone’s desire to make money.
If that was an attempt to make a dig at TSTSNBN
It wasn’t. I wrote this piece as soon as I saw the story pop up and I could get a good read on it. Like we keep saying, we’re not doing this to compete or to attack anybody else in particular.
And it was also a bit of an inside joke with a few of the founders that are considerably less Trump-tolerant (or Trump-supporting, if you ask them) than I.
I work in the rural telecom market and I can say that loads of small businesses are rejoicing. I’ve also seen a surge in capital expenditures related to internet infrastructure that started right around when Pai became head of the FCC.
I am telling y’all, rural telco is going o explode.
As an aside, I have always wanted to buy the CO and plant in a nice Wyoming town and turn cash on rural AWESOME service.
“Mark another one down in “garbage that the current admin has started the process of fixing in a way libertarians should be satisfied with”. I know it pains some people, but its the truth.”
Thank you Sloopy. This whole thing has been a bit confusing for me because it is separating the wheat from the chaff and respectively they aren’t who I expected them to be. One reason I turned sour on TSTSNBN was their apeshit tantrums over Trump when he was promising things they have claimed to want but none of us had much hope of ever getting.
When he said he was going to drain the swamp and the wheels were coming off of the gravy train everyone started showing their true colors.
Geez. We have the five year old today. Wife did morning duty, now it is my turn. My God, there is a good reason humans reproduce at a young age.
No shit! And your wife is like half your age or some shit right? DON’T GIVE HER SHOES AND SHE WON’T THINK SHE CAN LEAVE THE KITCHEN!
/why there are no libertarian women.
I thought I would follow up. It is 20 minutes since I posted that. My wife just informed me that the five year old had a bit of a mishap. She had to clean his underwear so she undressed him, gave him a quick bath and while she was on the back porch preparing the undies for the washing machine with the water hose he flushed his shorts down the toilet. In his words: “I was mean to them so I flushed them.”
*facepalm*
Off to the hardware store to buy a new wax ring.
My oldest daughter is 4 and a 1/2.
My thoughts and prayers are with you.
My God, there is a good reason humans reproduce at a young age.
This x 1000. I have 2 friends from when I was in college who have children (not grandchildren) under 5. I have no idea how they do it.