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climbski2
Mountain climber
Anchorage AK, Reno NV
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Feb 26, 2015 - 11:10am PT
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I have a good feel for JE and I suspect he is very misinformed as to what this is about. Or I am completely misunderstanding his position.
While I understand misgivings about government regulation I am well aware there are very powerful entities that are even less trustworthy than government regarding operating in the public interest.
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Feb 26, 2015 - 11:18am PT
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I'm always surprised at how effective misinformation campaigns are, but i guess I shouldn't be at this point. After Iraq, anything's possible.
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Feb 26, 2015 - 11:23am PT
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I remember those heady days when the government was in the hot seat for, oh, invading a non-hostile country for pretty much no reason, spying on all of us in secret, torturing people, giving the largest tax break in history to its rich friends even as it went on a cocaine spending spree which destroyed the surplus, and being on watch during the largest economic collapse since the Depression.
It's a weird world when the same vitriol is dished out for actually doing something absolutely vital for the public good.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Feb 26, 2015 - 11:27am PT
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This is merely a commercial battle between competing commercial interests. An article years ago in the Washington Post describes it well:
"Put another way, if net neutrality passes, the AT&Ts of the world will be forced to pay for all of their equipment upgrades themselves and could not subsidize that effort by imposing premium fees for premium services. If net neutrality fails, they will be able to recoup more of those costs than they can now from the likes of Google Inc., Microsoft Corp. and other major users of the World Wide Web.
At its heart, then, the battle is commercial -- over who pays how much for improvements to the Internet that we all use and sometimes love."
from:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/25/AR2006062500735.html
The parties that benefit from net neutrality have been, by and large, significant contributors to this administration's election efforts, but we all know that only the Koch Brothers' cash corrupts the system.
John
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Feb 26, 2015 - 11:31am PT
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ATT will have to pay more?
I am crying a RIVER over here!
It's called a business environment, and regulation is part of it.
Adapt or die.
I think ATT will be just fine.
The free speech/equal opportunity implications of net neutrality, particularly given that all eyes are on America on this issue, far outweigh ATT's slightly higher annual maintenance bill.
Sorry to be so callous on that.
The unfortunate but almost required 'Koch' reference unveils the knee jerk partisan thinking behind it - but lo siento senior, this isn't a partisan issue. At all.
Kudos to the Koch brothers for ponying up real money to end mass incarceration in America, BTW. An enemy on one issue can be a friend on another.
That net neutrality financially benefits some corporations over others a) is bidness as usual and b) does not constitute a counter argument for such a huge and far reaching public benefit in terms of free speech and social justice (oh, sorry, that liberal crap just leaked out all of a sudden. MAKE MONEY!!!!!)
The campaign contribution thing is silly data fudging for that conspiratorial messaging so popular among a predictable segment of the population, of course. There has been robust public advocacy for net neutrality for years.
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bobinc
Trad climber
Portland, Or
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Feb 26, 2015 - 11:34am PT
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Private utilities that sell us things like electricity and natural gas are already regulated (at the state level, admittedly) so that they don't charge us an arm and a leg for things we (now) consider essential. (Too bad we haven't gotten that far with health care. Go figure.)
Why should things be done differently in this case? And why not by the feds, since the net does indeed go across state lines?
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climbski2
Mountain climber
Anchorage AK, Reno NV
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Feb 26, 2015 - 11:44am PT
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I consider the net a fundamental basic necessity of modern society. Like Roads and phones and electricity.
The content of the internet is what makes it important. Access to providing content and consuming it is the key importance.
Allowing infrastructure providers to determine levels of access to information is the bigger threat to freedom of speech than the feared opportunity loss in the rate of improved infrastructure.
So far the system of net neutrality has changed the world for the better. I suggest we keep it.
The quote by JE is a bit misleading.. It should read companies like At&T will continue to have to do business as they are currently doing it. They will not be allowed to artificially bottleneck access to those who do not wish to pay extra for full access.
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Feb 26, 2015 - 11:48am PT
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To the FCC:
THANK YOU.
Tough issue.
Powerful players.
Great job.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Feb 26, 2015 - 12:00pm PT
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Dave, I would appreciation your correction, beyond saying that I misunderstand. What is the correct understanding?
Thanks.
John
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NutAgain!
Trad climber
South Pasadena, CA
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Feb 26, 2015 - 12:03pm PT
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JL- You are partially right. There is a corporate battle over how to split internet-related revenue between infrastructure providers and content providers. The infrastructure providers are the ones who made the big risks, invested lots of money in sticking wires in the ground, and on some level it sucks that late-comers with a few servers can collect premium revenues while the ones who did the heavy lifting are regulated to make a small profit. On the face of it, that sucks.
But.
The problem is the high financial and logistical barrier to entry for providing the last mile connections. We don't want an unregulated monopoly in that space, but it doesn't make sense for 20 companies to lay wires/fibers to everyone's house. For the sake of basic efficiency, conservative use of resources, and minimal construction disruption to streets and neighborhoods, this infrastructure should be shared to the extent reasonable based on available technology. But then who gets stuck with the bill for doing all that work? Who is stuck with a regulated commodity business while those riding over it get the high-margin high profit business?
A good analogy would be like if a delivery company paved roads to everyone's house, in anticipation of making more profitable deliveries to those houses. Then the government steps in and says "hey these roads are too important for basic life, we can't let any company limit their use." I think this argument is basically right. At the start people didn't recognize the value of this thing a company created, but at some point there is a bigger common value that should not be limited to control by a company. The problem then, is how to compensate the business that made the investment that the government or others were unwilling to make. Aside from that, there is no question that the government should take action to protect "the way of life" of humans when that interest is in conflict with corporate profits. But it needs to be done in a way that does not send a signal to the world that America is too dangerous to invest your money for business. There needs to be reasonable rules and processes.
In an ethical world, this could be agreed upon up front, and the expenses reasonably shared for the common infrastructure. It could be a government expense and we all pay taxes for it. Or given that it has already been built/invested by a few companies as part of an expectation of future profit, perhaps the owners of the last mile infrastructure should be compensated (as for a road right-of-way) and the equipment "nationalized" and maintained going forward by tax revenues or outsourced to a business that manages it on contract for the government like a public utility. Or just maintained as private ownership but heavily regulated so as to keep it as a commodity cheap infrastructure that facilitates other innovative businesses that use the infrastructure. And this last option appears to be what is happening.
I have no idea what sort of compensation if any is happening for those who have invested in the last mile infrastructure. Perhaps none, and that's just a business risk that they understood from the beginning, and why they invested so heavily in lobbyists to reduce their business risk.
But separate from all of this business consideration is the social/political implications of access to voicing one's ideas and to create virtual public assemblies. Public assemblies now happen on vast virtual scales and manipulating who has access to reaching the audience to form those virtual assemblies is tantamount to blocking public assembly, violating the first amendment.
Protecting access to this medium is a huge win for the democratic process. But there is another part of this same issue in which we are still in trouble. The Citizens United case of the Supreme Court a few years back effectively equated money with free speech. So we have a mixed bag now- anyone's access to the Internet as a public distribution medium is now protected, but unfortunately there is now nothing to stop richer rivals from flooding that medium and drowning your message.
In other words, those who are looking for your message can still search and find it if they know where to look, but unless you have enough money to overcome your rivals, your message will be a needle in the haystack and lost to the public. The idea of access to information and ideas to be debated on their merits as a basis for evolving our government- this ideal behind the access to information was perverted in the Citizens United case, and remains as a major danger to a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Feb 26, 2015 - 12:13pm PT
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Thanks, NutAgain! The premise, then, is that "last mile conductivity" is a natural monopoly, and should therefore be regulated like a public utility.
Forgive me, though, if I don't accept that premise at face value. The nature of a natural monopoly is one of continuously falling marginal costs. It's not clear to me that broadband service has that characteristic. More importantly, I see no physical barrier to having multiple broadband providers, in contrast to, say, having multiple roads in your example.
In fact, most broadband monopolies that I've observed came about because operators like Comcast (who I despise, but I try not to let personal animus cloud policy decisions) colluded with local governments to create - and share the misbegotten fruit of - a monopoly.
If you really want to "free" the internet from monopolization, pass a national law preempting and prohibiting local restriction on competition in broadband connectivity.
John
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NutAgain!
Trad climber
South Pasadena, CA
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Feb 26, 2015 - 12:28pm PT
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I think the last mile is not a natural monopoly as a road would be, but is a natural oligopoly. There a few potential media over which the last mile can be managed:
1) Smoke signals
2) Pigeons
3) Physical media like copper cabling, fiber optics, etc...
4) Radio transmissions (divided by different frequency bands or time division or encoding mechanisms)- in different flavors from neighborhood transceivers to direct satellite distribution
So yes it is possible for a new infrastructure to be deployed in parallel to existing ones, and this is a natural way to handle technology advancements. But from a societal perspective it doesn't make sense for multiple providers to lay in parallel the same expensive technology. There is a natural monopoly for a given last-mile technology, while a few technologies in parallel may competitively coexist and have different advantages in different environments.
A deeper question might be: how to decide who gets the monopoly for a given technology? In the business world it is easy- whoever can convince investors, organize and deploy it first, and buy up competitors to aggregate the biggest business. And along the way they are bribing/convincing local communities or whatever they have to do to get their permits and rights of way through more quickly. Here, it really is a wild jungle and whichever company survives has proven itself to be the best competitor- maybe not for technology alone, but when the full mix of what it takes to survive is considered.
This process would certainly be less efficient, and lead to crappier companies running the show, if a government pre-picks a company to own the monopoly and develop it. The sense of entitlement would not be consistent with good customer service or cost efficiencies, etc. So maybe the way it happens today is not great, but I can't think of anything better. We need to let new technologies run wild for a while, let the strongest competitors emerge and let technology and business processes mature, and then at a critical inflection point, the government steps in to regulate the space to facilitate consumer interest after the winning formula monopolies/oligopolies have emerged. In other words, use laissez-faire business practices to quickly discover the winning formulas, but then impose government regulation when competitive pressures can no longer assure protection of the consumer interest.
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Feb 26, 2015 - 12:39pm PT
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One big question is who gets stuck with the expensive rural buildouts? If a primary goal is to provide connectivity for everyone (it is), how is the busy divvied up in a given region to make spread service faster? Temporary monopolistic practices can be offered up to pay for more expensive branches.
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NutAgain!
Trad climber
South Pasadena, CA
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Feb 26, 2015 - 12:45pm PT
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One other subtle point: there can be a distinction between who owns and maintains the physical assets for distributing signals to the last mile (e.g. the wires, and boxes within neighborhoods that facilitate fanning out to all the separate houses), and who owns and maintains the equipment in the "central offices". The COs are the basic distribution points where big equipment lives, that connects tens of thousands of houses to the network between the COs.
The assets from the COs to the houses I think should definitely be regulated, perhaps on the same basis that we consider a free public education (at least through 12th grade) a birthright of our citizens. Access to the internet is clear socio-economic divider. In our society, depriving a household of (or making the household pay a premium for) internet access is akin to giving an economic death sentence to the children raised there. That is why we have various taxes on our phone and internet services that take money out to fund the development of the internet in underdeveloped areas, to level this playing field across the country.
The issue of regulating ISPs to stop them from using their gatekeeper position as a profit source, which would come at the expense of equal access to content distribution, well this issue is more about what happens within the COs and datacenters of the ISPs and is technically not as much about the last mile.
The reason the "last mile" issue and the "content filtering" issues are entwined, is that historically the same company owns both pieces. Your local phone company. But in reality, there is typically a monopoly at the level of the physical assets going to each house and business, but there is a notion of competition within the COs. You may have heard these terms before:
RBOC - regional Bell operating company (the smaller regional companies that resulted when the national AT&T monopoly was dismantled by our government in the interest of consumers)
ILEC - incumbent local exchange carrier (typically the RBOC)
CLEC - competitive local exchange carrier
One of the mechanisms to break up the phone system monopolies was that the incumbent providers had to provide access to their competitors. So there are CLECs- competing companies that can lease space in the central offices of the incumbent carriers, and get their services connected to customers over the wires that are owned by the incumbent carriers. But as the internet has expanded, this has shifted even more. Now there are ISPs that manage their own datacenters in their own facilities, and they just lease the physical cross-connects from your house or business to their own datacenter.
Back to the issue of net neutrality- this is really an issue that lives at the level of the Internet Service Provider, the entity that deals with IP packets and filtering content based on TCP/UDP port or IP addresses or looking deeper into packets to determine what applications are being used. The company doing this is an important gateway that can hinder the distribution of information, and it may or may not be the same as the company that controls the transmission of information across wires or airwaves in the last mile to your house. For the majority of residential Internet users, it is the same company.
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Jorroh
climber
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Feb 26, 2015 - 12:49pm PT
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"The parties that benefit from net neutrality have been, by and large, significant contributors to this administration's election efforts, but we all know that only the Koch Brothers' cash corrupts the system."
No JE post is complete without the "look Ma...they're doing it too!"
Like a broken record.
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Happiegrrrl2
Trad climber
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Feb 26, 2015 - 01:07pm PT
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"The parties that benefit from net neutrality have been, by and large, significant contributors to this administration's election efforts, but we all know that only the Koch Brothers' cash corrupts the system."
Let's not forget about people like me, who would have my small ventures devastated within days of being unable to ransom fees to free my websites from being held hostage.
I may be just one person, but there are millions of others in the same boat. We may not have an audible voice alone, but if one cleans the wax from their ears, stops for a few seconds and listens....you can hear us roar. I think we are still all pretty much in shock that net neutrality didn't get the knife.
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NutAgain!
Trad climber
South Pasadena, CA
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Feb 26, 2015 - 01:09pm PT
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Presidential legacy building... this is something that he must have had a lot of influence over, and is something that should stand as a pinnacle achievement during his presidency:
A note from the President on net neutrality:
The FCC just voted in favor of a strong net neutrality rule to keep the Internet open and free.
That happened, in part, because millions of Americans across the country didn't just care about this issue: You stood up and made your voices heard, whether by adding your names to petitions, submitting public comments, or talking with the people you know about why this matters.
Read a special thank-you message from the President, then learn more about how we got to where we are today:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/net-neutrality
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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Feb 26, 2015 - 01:09pm PT
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HappieG. writes"
"Let's not forget about people like me, who would have my small ventures devastated within days of being unable to ransom fees to free my websites from being held hostage."
What kinds of problems have you been experiencing?
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Happiegrrrl2
Trad climber
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Feb 26, 2015 - 01:29pm PT
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Chaz..... That is not the question to be asked, and I think you are well aware of that fact. I do not like sneaky, obfuscating tactics like the one you were attempting to employ.
The question would be "What problems would you almost without a doubt experience should the net neutrality bill fail?"
If you actually could stand to have an answer that contradicts your position, that is.
But what do I know.... I'm just a woman trying to survive and build something. Maybe if you would listen to a man who runs a very substantial corporation, about to launch its IPO, on which I rely.
Chad Dickerson, CEO Etsy: http://www.whatthefolly.com/2015/02/26/transcript-etsy-ceo-chad-dickersons-remarks-at-the-fcc-net-neutrality-hearing/
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Craig Fry
Trad climber
So Cal.
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Feb 26, 2015 - 01:37pm PT
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Once again, the conservatives got their facts ass backwards, and are promoting a Corporate take over of the internet
100% wrong as always.
arguing against a free internet using lies providing to them
Net Neutrality keeps the Internet Free for all
why would you want it to be controlled by the pipelines?
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