Net neutrality is dead – at least for now. In a 3-2 vote today, the Federal Communications Commission approved a measure to remove the tough net neutrality rules it put in place just two years ago. Those rules prevented internet providers from blocking and throttling traffic and offering paid fast lanes. They also classified internet providers as Title II common carriers in order to give the measure strong legal backing.
Today’s vote undoes all of that. It removes the Title II designation, preventing the FCC from putting tough net neutrality rules in place even if it wanted to. And, it turns out, the Republicans now in charge of the FCC really don’t want to. The new rules largely don’t prevent internet providers from doing anything. They can block, throttle, and prioritize content if they wish to. The only real rule is that they have to publicly state that they’re going to do it.
Nobody wanted the FCC to vote like this. Public support for net neutrality is massive. The only reason this is happening is pure, unbridled corruption at the very root of the American political system.
This just shows how little influence the public actually has. I mean, it’s not over, but the fact it passed even with all that resistance is quite telling.
I sincerely hope that in the event that it stays, people will prefer to use ISPs that won’t throttle their connections and won’t offer premium connectivity packages, keeping things fair.
That’s the only hope out of this. That ISPs use ‘we don’t throttle your connection’ as a means to introduce competition.
But as a UK expat in the US, I saw quite quickly that there are large swathes of the country that wouldn’t have a choice of ISP anyway, so they are screwed.
Legalized ransomware. Belgium is not in a better position regarding the internet.
It’s true that the duopoly in Belgium is being protected by corrupt politicians (or the entire corrupt government), but there are at least SOME alternatives to choose from: EDPnet, Dommel, Orange, etc.
Granted, prices are ridiculous compared to neighbour countries, but at least most people aren’t screwed by the fact that they have the choice of one provider or fvck all.
I’m amused by all of the shock that an unelected bureaucrat doesn’t care what the public thinks.
Edited 2017-12-15 12:19 UTC
A large part of that is Americans in general not knowing how our political system works (and this is coming from an American who at least acknowledges that he doesn’t understand the entirety of it), and more specifically not understanding that we’ve legalized the very same corruption we condemn other nation states for.
The public has far less influence then even this indicates.
If the elite would disregard the public opinion (for example ignore votes in an election) but said on the news that they based their decisions on the public votes, do you really think that any of those dumbed down couch potatoes that make up most of the general public would notice?
Of course not. Not one of them cares enough about politics to do any research beyond watching the news. Thanks to that we are completely at the mercy of the politicians honesty.
I’m hoping that wireless 4G/5G/satellite internet service providers break the monopolies some of these Cable companies have on many parts of the US.
When/If that happens, the free markets should function properly and customers can start putting pressure (with their moneys) on internet service providers to do better.
When do free markets ever function properly?
100% of the times it works better than planned economies. However there is no free markets nowadays. All use fiat money.
All money is fiat. And if free markets were so great as you claim, they’d work with fiat money just as well.
Free markets never existed. They are always theoretical, and so your “100% of the times” is nothing but wishful thinking.
Free markets are worse than theoretical. They are like the perpetual motion machines of economics.
That’s the problem with ideologues. Their ideologies only work in a perfect world with no other consideration than their ideologies.
If your free market theories do not work with fiat money, have never existed (or if so, didn’t last long), then it is by definition an unworkable theory.
I didnt say free markets are great, i just said it is better than planned economies.
judgen,
You’d get relatively little debate from people, including me, presuming the competitive circumstances were different in the US. Free markets are great when companies are fighting over customers and there’s plenty of competition! This qualifier is crucial in determining whether the free market is able to serve the public interests. When there’s lots of competition, companies are forced to satisfy consumers or risk loosing them (and their profits).
However one can not claim that the free market is always the best approach without being willfully ignorant of what occurs with oligopolies and monopolies. The fact is that when consumers have no meaningful choice, the free market does *not* reward good service and investment, it can actually end up rewarding less investment and higher costs/fees!
Calling for “free markets” is not a solution because the free markets are enablers of the consolidation, merges, and acquisitions that led to our imbalance and lack of choice in the first place. So unless you have a plan to restore competition and consumer balance, calling for a “free market” seems like little more than an argument borne of a political agenda rather than a carefully thought out solution to our ISP monopolies.
Even in agricultural markets, which economics textbooks would call perfectly competitive, there are no “free” markets, because government interventions and manipulations are pervasive through subsidy programs, price ceilings/floors, tariffs, etc.
The opposite to free market is not planned economy, but regulated market.
Yes, judgen seems to conveniently “forget” it …while happily, cozy and comfortably living in one of the most prosperous examples of regulated market (or, really, simply “market”), Sweden…
What most of people want is fair market, not free market. The latter is just a puppet of the elite.
“fairness” is a very nebulous concept that has more to do with one’s own preferences than any objective standard.
Edited 2017-12-15 13:46 UTC
Every day. Big Govt fucks everything up, all day, every day
Really? The wireless providers are the worst offenders when it comes to limiting your internet connection and doing sleazy things.
Ahh, you still believe in “free market”, how adorable.
(and why exactly would you think cellular providers are the cure? Hint: US already has among the worst and most expensive cellular among developed nations)
Hope government is kept as far away as possible from the internet.
Imagine what an unscrupulous leader could do once the FCC had control.
We don’t have to imagine, that is literally what just happened. Apparently the answer is the unscrupulous leader just cedes control to the guys that paid him off and raises his middle finger to everyone else…
Edited 2017-12-15 00:14 UTC
I was thinking more in the lines of Kim jong Il, Joseph Goebbels and so on.
And by doing so, you completely missed that it already happened.
…Donald Trump
That won’t convince someone like judgen.
Small government types love big government when it comes to their ideologies.
You are readin WAY too much into my comment.
The Kims or someone like Goebbels wouldn’t need to mess around with regulators; they’d seize the physical infrastructure directly.
Also where does this weird idea that the Big Faceless Government can’t be trusted, but that a Big Faceless Corporation can be? It seems to me that the one in it purely for the money is the one that’s least trustworthy.
You do realize that the FCC guy (I cannot remember his name) was appointed by Obama, right?
SojoPhoto,
You do realize that when Obama was in office, we also criticized him for the revolving door and appointing industry insiders, right? Republicans don’t have a monopoly on the revolving door, unfortunately.
It’s kind of depressing to be an informed voter because you realize that both parties are incumbent and neither truly has the will to take corporations out of politics. Though there’s no denying trump’s corporate corruption is particularly nasty.
>You do realize that the FCC guy (I cannot remember his name) was appointed by Obama, right?<
Ajit Pai -current FCC chairman- was appointed by Trump. Tom Wheeler -prvious FCC chairman- was appointed by Obama.
Get your facts right.
Edited 2017-12-15 13:48 UTC
Remiks,
Edited 2017-12-15 14:13 UTC
The FCC just pulled the government out of regulating Internet access, but this is the same to you as a thug dictator taking it over?
There are sixty days for the US Congress to override the FCC via the Congressional Review Act with a simple majority. After recent events in Alabama and the turmoil in the Republican Party, some congress-critters might feel skittish about tying themselves to highly unpopular Trump administration officials and their actions.
https://gizmodo.com/wait-can-congress-stop-the-fcc-from-trampling-ne…
Edited 2017-12-15 00:44 UTC
It’s actually longer than sixty days. It’s sixty days *after* the next Congressional Review is published. When the ‘Make it all Title II’ rule was voted on in 2015 the next Congressional Review wasn’t slated to be published for six weeks, so that window was 102 days. A large number of states Attorneys Generals, the EFF, and the ACLU are preparing lawsuits. None of them will be filed until the next Congressional Review is published…legal procedures and all that.
So while things might appear quiet in the coming weeks, there is still opposition work to this awful ruling occurring.
The ISPs want to hit Google, the Music stores, Amazon, Facebook and other profitable business. The ISPs did not create those businesses, but now they want a part of it.
The reason ISPs are in the business, is due to profit. They make a profit, even if it is only 25cents per day per household. Wiring up households is not a losing business, otherwise they would not do it.
Neutrality does not mean neutrality for rates. You are going to start paying for accesses. Guarantee that this will happen. Packages, just like Cable TV.
Some towns and cities are beginning to install fibre and own the fibre, They do not plan to do throttling. They want to make running a city a priority, and the internet for Fire, Police, Medical, and city infastructur management, affordable. If you are on Verizon, or AT&T or other, the entrance to your home/business will not change if you change providers.
Time for municipalities to be responsible for the internet access and municipal distribution
Isatenstein,
Net neutrality supporters often focus on the ISPs abusing their monopoly, which is valid. However I actually think the biggest threats may not necessarily originate from monopolistic ISPs, but instead from big online internet companies that would like to become effective monopolies online.
Just think, instead of trying to draw customers by making their products competitive, online companies could start to bribe ISPs to throttle and block their competition even if the ISP had no profit motive to block them before. Without net neutrality, this type of private arrangement between ISPs and the big services providers becomes legal.
Of course, the largest companies have cash and bargaining power, but small companies will face increasing barriers to entry for the same service.
What you are forecasting is going to happen. Amazon already has their own servers, offering cloud computing and warehousing. Now, they could make deals to purchase the lines from the smaller ISPs. For the current ISP employees, it would be a name change, nothing more.
But as ISP consolidation takes place, Google and the likes will pay a price.
The Republicans see no gain for them with the NN. What will it do for the 2020 elections?
Other countries will continue with Network Neutrality, as it is important to promote small businesses.
Will Google and the like start to route their traffic through Mexico and Canada?
Thursday to repeal the 2015 rules adopted under the Obama administration, which classified ISPs as public utilities under a 1934 law intended to regulate telephone service. FCC chairman Ajit Pai has argued that these “heavy-handed†regulations throttled investment and innovation and harmed poor and rural consumers.
“This is not Thunderdome. The FCC is not killing the internet,†Commissioner Brendan Carr said at the hearing on Thursday. “We are not relying on market forces alone. We are not giving ISPs free reign to dictate your online experience.â€
in 2007…when the entire financial system failed.
You are now living in a planned economy, where banks plan economic activity through the printing of money and its use in buying stocks and zero percent loans to corporations to buy their own stocks and then declare the economy is ROBUST, RECOVERED and unemployment is low….
Ad Nauseum now for the past 10 years.
How long this can go on I suspect won’t be much longer without a major war, black flag event. But who knows, the technological control of the financial system has even impressed me in its control structures to prevent implosion.
Thank God we have Open Source software otherwise the future would look pretty darn bleak technologically.
We should be able to pick up the pieces afterwards and form open source routing points to rebuild the internet internally in the USA.
This time we will do it right.
But the internet is nothing now more than a monitoring tool for a bunch of oligarchs and a handful of companies to insure you behave.
This gets worse every year as in the USA all form of actualy discourse is now anything you say or disagree with the local or state or federal governments you are a racist or something.
Just as long as you shut up and can’t have a rational discussion.
Edited 2017-12-15 03:32 UTC
Looks at the Middle East
Uh…-10 years?
The previous legislation was not so good either. I don’t want any government ruling the internet just like China. We need actual Net Neutrality but we also need infrastructure investment and the alternative was to increase everyone’s internet bill and no one was going to be happy about it. By billing heavy users like Youtube money is going to come from advertising companies that advertise for those same big companies that people seem to hate so much.
Congratulations. Now you have a system where everyone’s internet bill is going to increase, and “heavy users” (or users we don’t like politically) also get billed heavily.
YouTube already pay for the data they transmit. They pay transit providers to carry their data. They pay IXPs for ports. They pay to store their data in CDNs that cache it as local to the end user as possible.
Most large companies transit costs would make your eyes water.
It’s interesting though that you label YouTube as a “heavy user”. YouTube isn’t the user: the user who pays the ISP for a service is the user. So there you have it; both ends are already paying for the data they use, where’s the problem precisely? Why do certain ISPs want to double-dip? Simple: because they can, and because they’ve spent the last decade building some solid monopolies where they now control the last-mile, and they know they can get away with it.
I call YouTube user because they are the ones who pay dedicated channels in order to serve ads to consumers (youtube watchers) who don’t pay directly to the company (unlike Netflix) and usually pay for a shared connection (hence cheaper), It’s one of the reasons why ISP’s wanted to profit with web browsing tracking, it is what keeps youtube afloat, it was only logical that ISP’s would follow suit to pay for new infrastructure, and also to keep profits up.
Also remember that most ISP’s oversell bandwidth because very few users used their bandwidth simultaneously, until Netflix and YouTube showed up in the scene.
And also most web companies and DNS are located in the USA.
I agree with your take on monopolies, if I had to choose between competition and government intervention I would go with the former.
Edited 2017-12-16 04:06 UTC
jigzat,
Yes, I don’t have a problem with overselling provided that ISPs make a good faith effort to correct the bottlenecks in order to achieve the advertised rates.
Incidentally under the obama administration in 2011 the FCC started investigating the discrepancies between advertised rates and actual rates (with telemetry data collected from real ISP customers).
Actual versus advertised rates for isps back in 2011:
https://www.fcc.gov/reports-research/reports/measuring-broadband-ame…
Our ISP was cablevision’s optimum online service. The FCC’s data shows that actual speed / advertised speed was 50%, this result was in fact the worst of the whole lot. I can personally corroborate the FCC’s claims as we were routinely unable to get advertised rates. Alas, it was the only broadband company servicing our area.
The FCC’s investigations actually made a difference, and the service improved dramatically after that. This is also reflected on the FCC data. Here’s the latest 2016 report:
https://www.fcc.gov/reports-research/reports/measuring-broadband-ame…
We’re actually getting 105% the advertised rate, and my tests confirm this holds at all hours of the day so it’s safe to say they’ve over-provisioned the bandwidth. The FCC data shows that all of the delinquent cable companies made strong improvements since the FCC’s initial reporting.
It shows that under good leadership the FCC does bring about positive changes to the industry. But now I worry that the bad blood occupying the FCC today will result in regressive changes.
Edited 2017-12-16 05:58 UTC
You are right but my point is that we need actual net neutrality, in the full meaning of the word, and not a law that is called like that but that it has some shady things between the lines, this goes beyond bandwidth and speed. I don’t want the government or any multilateral international entity to have the power to regulate internet and it’s content, because it is near impossible to fight against. Private entities can also become unscrupulous and bias but they are a lesser demon.
Bandwidth rate corroboration can be deceiving because it doesn’t test every user simultaneously. It runs sparse tests and the ISP will allow the promised rates but in a rush hour it will be different and they will begin to slow down some users, that is why some countries have their own Google and YouTube cache servers, otherwise the international channels wouldn’t have enough bandwidth to support traffic.
In the end I think the FCC repeal is a good thing because we can push for a better law, we need more competition and honesty from ISP’s and also huge infrastructure investments. The discussion now is where should this money come from.
jigzat,
Should we abolish the laws on murder so that we can come up with better ones? No, this makes no sense. This is not how laws get improved. It’s just not a justification for removing pro-consumer laws.
That’s their problem if they designed their business around an unsustainable business model. Gouging & shaking down to fill the gap in your balance sheet is unethical.
Unfortunately, that is nonsense in my eyes. I have the same ISP for the past 5 years. bought initially the contract for 60Mb/s. I have now 250Mb/s. The best part now … no increase of monthly payment, no changes to my contract. They updated the service on their own and made it available for their consumers.
The only thing they want me to do right now, and it is optional, is to change the modem to new one, increasing then the rent by 10PLN approximately $3.3. Like this, there are the other players in the market with the same approach.
So far, I have only seen segmentation of the data on mobile internet for phones, where you can get a package for dedicated traffic for Facebook.
Using your line of though, I should have had my rent increase so they could implement new infrastructure. It is not needed as long management knows what needs to be done and to serve the public. But here is where it comes in the difference of mindset in US versus EU.
It also helps in the EU that there is no monopolies, just oligopolies. And thanks to the LTE, cable has to fight competition from that are as well.
Most if not all ISPs oversell bandwidth since usage is not continuous, it’s one of the reasons why internet access has become so “cheap” this days, it is like a timeshare model, of course there has been investments on infrastructure hence ISP’s feel confident to offer users more bandwidth but they still expect ocasional heavy usage.
Youtube and Netflix had a huge success and ended up eating up half of the available bandwidth before ISP’s lay down additional infrastructure. Also most Web Hosting companies and DNS are located in the USA.
You keep saying this and I have literally no idea what point you’re actually trying to make.
Let’s be honest, Republicans have been anti-Net Neutrality since before the election so the public actually voted for this, so they are getting what they want and deserve.
I’m not sure if this ruling is good or bad quite honestly. I do know I’m more than a little suspicious of the very same folks that brought in all the cable regulations 10 years ago which seriously decreased services and caused rates to go up. I was doing work for the cable companies back then, working on their equipment. I saw the impact it had, and very little of it was good for the consumer.
Just for a little balance, here’s a video that presents the issue in a more complete way. It’s about 12 minutes long.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G35g5HQVjpU
There really is more than one side to this, from a consumer’s point of view.
Edited 2017-12-15 18:11 UTC
Metrol,
Steven crowder spouts too much BS for my tastes.
Can you elaborate in your own words how consumer interests were hurt by net neutrality? The problem is consumer interests are not represented in these backroom deals *combined* with the fact that there’s insufficient competition to cause ISPs to worry about loosing customers. ISP monopolies hold all the cards, net neutrality sought to ensure that consumers wouldn’t loose choices online just because they had no choice of ISP.
Even some of the ISPs admitted to investors that net neutrality didn’t really harm the ISP business.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20141211/05462229389/verizon-admit…
Edited 2017-12-15 18:56 UTC
I think the point that Mr. Crowder was trying to get out is that NN likely won’t impact already established big players. Rarely do any regulations hurt them. The question is, do these rules prevent smaller players from competing? I don’t think we really know yet. Had NN stayed in place for a longer period of time, likely the answer would be more obvious.
Metrol,
I think most of us are in agreement about how important competition is.
Having 3 providers is lucky for you, haha. I bet that when google fiber came in, the other ISPs suddenly had to up their game because they knew that consumers with a choice don’t have to tolerate the bad service any more.
The problem with ajit pai is that he just wants to repeal net neutrality without increasing competition, he hasn’t outlined any policies that would do so.
Edited 2017-12-15 20:17 UTC
But that isn’t the role of government. There is no “policy” that can force competition to happen. Government does have a valuable role in being a hopefully impartial referee in matters.
Only way that competition happens, in any industry, is someone out there sees a need that isn’t being fulfilled and does so. That can only happen if the barrier to that market isn’t blocked off.
Look at all the legal hoops that Tesla has had to jump through because of all the regulations put in place to protect consumers from car manufacturers. It’s genuinely crazy that a mfg can’t see directly to a consumer. At the time, those laws made sense for a lot of reasons. Now, they’ve stifled who can make and sell this product.
I honestly don’t know of NN is a good or bad thing. I guess it comes down to a choice of which flavor of corruption you prefer, the corporations trying to make a buck or the politicians they paid for. I have to admit, I tend to side with the corporations since they can be competed with. Can’t compete with the government once they step in.
Metrol,
Well sure, both government and powerful corporations can take away public consumer freedoms. So I do understand that. However in the case of net neutrality, the government was protecting the consumer freedom to use their own bandwidth as they see fit. Siding with corporations on this issue kind of implies that corporations should be free to dictate our use of bandwidth, and that consumer freedom of choice does not matter.
Edited 2017-12-15 22:53 UTC
It’s actually much easier to compete with the government. Why do you think corporations spend so much money trying to prevent competition?
The only reason why the government in the US is a big problem is because it is just an arm of the corporations. It’s people like you who have failed to exercise your voting power properly that the government has turned into the thing you hate.
Of course it is one of the roles of gov; at my place competition was introduced by stern measures to disband monopoly…
The next president already has his work cut out for himself
Thom, let me reassure you – you haven’t seen corruption yet.
Come to/read about Russia. That’s what the definition of corruption is.
Seriously? Capitalism is corruption, in your studied opinion? I’m not a fan of the FCC’s decision on this, but the left’s overreaction to anything done by conservatives is insane – think back to last November (you may have made claims along these lines) when the left were saying Trump would tank the economy, world leaders would bail on us, blah de blah… Economy’s gang busters, world leaders are all mouth, turns out the left were the ones in bed with the Russians and corrupt as all get out, and you’re holding out on the world’s gonna end rhetoric? Sheesh.
But why on earth would the Porn industry have stepped up and sunk money into this? I mean they don’t want all their revenue from streaming nakedness to be throttled right? They want throbbing members, not throttled network.
And they’re not huge like Netflix, Amazon, etc to be able to pay any ISPs for the privilege of a fast lane, yet together they would be large enough to make political difference.
Maybe if Trump had heard that his porn may have to buffer, he would have helped Net Neutrality stay a thing!
so this removal of the net neutrality stuff and title II common carrier protection – is basically like allowing the Bottled Water Company to piss in the “free” municipal water supply just so they can have more leverage to sell you the more expensive/cleaner bottled water.
Anyway who claims otherwise is im(h)o delusional!
/B.