Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

You are here: MacNN Forums > News > Tech News > Opponents, supporters of FCC Net Neutrality, Title II vote speak out

Opponents, supporters of FCC Net Neutrality, Title II vote speak out
Thread Tools
NewsPoster
MacNN Staff
Join Date: Jul 2012
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 26, 2015, 03:46 PM
 
As expected, the Federal Communication Commission's votes today have not gone unnoticed by the telecommunications and Internet industry. There are no surprises in the commentary generated by the vote, with posturing and veiled threats being delivered by those impacted negatively by the vote.

Verizon, who has called itself a Title II carrier in the past defending itself, wrote a blog post completely in Morse code, calling it "FCC's 'Throwback Thursday' Move Imposes 1930s Rules on the Internet." Even the translated version of the text, available in a PDF, is written in a typewriter font. Calling the vote "misguided" Verizon says that "changing a platform that has been so successful should be done, if at all, only after careful policy analysis, full transparency, and by the legislature."

Senator Al Franken (D-MN) says that the vote today is an "enormous victory." He believes that "Net neutrality is important for consumers, for small businesses and startups trying to compete with the big guys, and ultimately, for the innovation that has helped drive our economy for the past several decades." He reminds readers that the Republicans are "working on legislation to undo all of this."

FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai sees higher prices and slower speeds in consumers' future. Pai constantly referred to the plan as "President Obama's plan," and reinforced his talking point today by saying that "We are flip-flopping for one reason and one reason only, President Obama told us to do so."

The Telecommunications Industry Association is "confident that Title II regulation will be rejected as Congress, the courts and consumers fully understand how it will hold back investment, innovation and growth."

Pro-industry CTIA claims that "Title II needlessly puts at risk our nation's 5G future and the promise of a more connected life."

In its own post on the issue, AT&T says that it faces "the uncertainty of litigation" and threateningly notes that "Partisan decisions taken on 3-2 votes can be undone on similarly partisan 3-2 votes only two years hence. And FCC decisions made without clear authorization by Congress (and who can honestly argue Congress intended this?) can be undone quickly by Congress or the courts." It claims that it is still seeking a "consensus solution."

Industry advocacy group NCTA says that "we must now look to other branches of government for a more balanced resolution." It believes that "Working together, our legislative leaders can protect an open Internet, while ensuring that it remains free for innovation without government permission and that it continues to create strong incentives to deploying ever-faster broadband to every American."

Microsoft has a terse statement about the ruling, saying only that "we applaud the FCC's decision to preserve the fundamentally open nature of the Internet and look forward to reading the Order and rules." Neither are fully available other than a rule synopsis as of yet.

Notably, all responders to the vote claim to want to work with the Government on either advancing the current plan, or overturning it and making a more friendly one to what they respectively seek. All are light on substance, and dictate either unwavering success, or miserable failure with the plan, and the reality is somewhere in between.

The vote doesn't immediately impose the rules -- it can take up to six months for the Federal Register to respond to the changes submitted by the FCC. The ISPs are likely to challenge the order in court, as reinforced by today's statements, which will delay the process further.
( Last edited by NewsPoster; Feb 26, 2015 at 03:54 PM. )
     
DiabloConQueso
Grizzled Veteran
Join Date: Jun 2008
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 26, 2015, 04:08 PM
 
"FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai sees higher prices and slower speeds in consumers' future"

I agree wholeheartedly.

It certainly would be a retaliatory dick move for ISPs to raise their prices and lower their speeds.

Nothing about Net Neutrality or Title II regulation forces ISPs to incur more costs, and in turn raise their prices, lower their speeds, or slow their infrastructure growth. Doing so to their customers would be completely voluntary.

If I tell you that I'm gonna punch a puppy in the face unless you give me what I want, and you don't give me what I want and the puppy gets punched, do I get to blame you for the pain of the puppy? After all, you didn't give me what I wanted, and if you had the puppy wouldn't have been punched, so it's gotta be your fault.
     
Flying Meat
Senior User
Join Date: Jan 2007
Location: SF
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 26, 2015, 05:01 PM
 
Well said, DiabloCoQueso.

Same approach as threatening to punch DHS because Keystone.
     
Charles Martin
Mac Elite
Join Date: Aug 2001
Location: Maitland, FL
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 26, 2015, 05:13 PM
 
Thankfully, these new rules mean that the FCC can force ISPs not to engage in retaliatory behaviour, or can sue them in court to get even harsher penalties if it did something like that.

After much wailing and gnashing of teeth, my prediction is that the ISPs will discover -- in exactly the same pattern that happened when the FCC went all Title II on wireless and wired phones all those years ago -- that nothing much has actually changed and there is plenty of money to be made, and (again like what happened with cellular) things are fine, and in fact better in many ways.

This whole debate reminds of the "gay marriage" fight -- much ado about nothing.
Charles Martin
MacNN Editor
     
DiabloConQueso
Grizzled Veteran
Join Date: Jun 2008
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 26, 2015, 05:38 PM
 
Yep. The ISPs only real complaint could be, "But you've taken away the possibility of us leveraging our power for evil, and, while we probably would never do that anyway, we just don't like you taking that option away!"
     
The Vicar
Dedicated MacNNer
Join Date: Jul 2009
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 26, 2015, 05:57 PM
 
Funny how Europe, where the government is much more heavily involved and does a lot more regulating, they have LOWER prices and HIGHER speeds...
     
Mr. Strat
Dedicated MacNNer
Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: State of WA
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 26, 2015, 06:23 PM
 
This isn't Europe.

The end result will be the same as for everything else the government gets their fingers into: higher prices and lower quality - think Obamacare.
     
Makosuke
Dedicated MacNNer
Join Date: Aug 2001
Location: California
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 26, 2015, 06:24 PM
 
My rule #1 is generally: If the cable or phone company tells you something is bad for them, it's probably a lie. They have proven through action on a national scale that they simply can't be trusted to provide competitive service, and will do absolutely anything at the competitive or regulatory level to maintain their functional monopoly. The telecom giants hate this, so almost by definition, it's good for me.

Also: Why is it that in Japan (which has extremely strict government regulation of most industries, I might add) my in-laws, who live in the middle of nowhere, have a half-dozen ISPs to chose from and have been able to get gigabit fiber-to-the-home service for *years*, when here in the United States, in a much larger town, I have exactly two ISP choices (which is one more than a lot of major metropolitan areas), and only recently got the offer of 18MBit from one of them--for around what 100Mbit costs at my in-laws.

It should be a national embarrassment, and the fact that it's gone on this long without anybody other than maybe Google's fiber experiments doing anything substantive (unless you count municipal broadband, which the telecom companies then of course had made illegal in as many states as they could) should be shameful to all of us who live here.
     
coitus
Forum Regular
Join Date: Aug 2000
Location: OKC, OK USA
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 26, 2015, 06:58 PM
 
Re: Mr. Strat

I couldn't not disagree with you more on the two issues raised by your rather terse post.

Concerning broadband...

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-24528383

Concerning the (VERY OFF-TOPIC) Affordable Care Act...

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/02/22/sunday-review/steven-rattner-for-tens-of-millions-obamacare-is-working.html

It is a shame far too much of the American public doesn't make/have the time to research and make informed decisions and then make it to the ballot box on voting day. We deserve far better than what Congress has given us the past several sessions. The partisan nonsense is bad for every one that doesn't have a campaign coffer to fill.

My two-cents...

-C
     
Mike Wuerthele
Managing Editor
Join Date: Jul 2012
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 26, 2015, 07:08 PM
 
Okay gang, as a reminder - this thread is on the main news page. Discuss, but be civil.
     
rtamesis
Dedicated MacNNer
Join Date: Jan 2000
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 26, 2015, 09:05 PM
 
I don't think anybody truly knows at this point how this is going to affect us all. It will probably take at least a year before we start to see the unintended consequences of these new rules.
     
Charles Martin
Mac Elite
Join Date: Aug 2001
Location: Maitland, FL
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 26, 2015, 10:06 PM
 
Makosuke: I think part of the reason why more Americans are not up in arms about how expensive broadband is in the US, how slow it is (compared to the rest of the industrialized world), and how poor the customer service is, is because Americans don't, by and large, travel outside the US much. And even if they do, they don't tend to spend much time with the locals, so they wouldn't know that your rural parents get so much more for much less, and better service. Travel broadbands the mind, you might say.
( Last edited by Charles Martin; Feb 26, 2015 at 10:17 PM. )
Charles Martin
MacNN Editor
     
HPeet
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Join Date: Oct 2011
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 27, 2015, 08:31 AM
 
Another market ripe for disruption.
     
Flying Meat
Senior User
Join Date: Jan 2007
Location: SF
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 27, 2015, 02:28 PM
 
I don't think there will be any unintended consequences. I'm willing to bet the consequences we do see will be quite intended.
To repeat, the same type of Title II controls were applied to the mobile industry, and mobile industry execs admit it isn't a problem.
What we will see in time is that the companies effected either behave responsibly or engage in retaliatory and punitive practices. That goes to ethics and responsible leadership.
     
DiabloConQueso
Grizzled Veteran
Join Date: Jun 2008
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 27, 2015, 02:56 PM
 
Correction, HPeet -- the market was *headed* for disruption (in the form of paid prioritization, and traffic shaping and profiling).

Title II regulation tries to ensure *no* disruption to the way it is today (which is non-prioritized, equal access for all traffic).
     
   
Thread Tools
 
Forum Links
Forum Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts
BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Top
Privacy Policy
All times are GMT -4. The time now is 12:13 AM.
All contents of these forums © 1995-2017 MacNN. All rights reserved.
Branding + Design: www.gesamtbild.com
vBulletin v.3.8.8 © 2000-2017, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.,