FCC to Reclassify Broadband

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Richard S.
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Post by Richard S. » Fri. May. 07, 2010 6:37 am

Under this plan, the FCC will reclassify broadband as a regulated service under Title II. But broadband services will be exempt from most of the old rules written for a monopolistic, 100-year-old telephone infrastructure.

The FCC has no intention of forcing facilities sharing or to control rates, FCC officials have promised. The FCC says all it is trying to do with this measure is to reassert the limited authority it thought it had before the Comcast decision. Genachowski simply wants to put the agency on firmer legal ground so that the agency can finish making its proposed Net neutrality principles official regulation. Without reclassification, the FCC argues that its new rules could be challenged in court.
So far so good. Still need to digest exactly what this will do but sounds as if they will be allowing them to offer a neutral tiered service. As long as that is the path we're going down I see no problem with it, the ISP keeps control of their pricing and network. Sites like mine remain on equal footing. The consumer eating up ridiculous amounts of bandwidth pays for it like they should.

 
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Post by Black_And_Blue » Fri. May. 07, 2010 8:46 am

Look outside the box and you will begin to see what is coming.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window

 
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Post by Dann757 » Fri. May. 07, 2010 9:53 am

Coming soon to your PC

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Post by acesover » Fri. May. 07, 2010 4:49 pm

Close the 7 windows, I'm getting cold

 
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Post by Black_And_Blue » Mon. May. 17, 2010 8:46 pm

In the future, on the public utility internet, all views and opinions will be mandated by law, for the good of the collective.

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Post by Richard S. » Mon. May. 17, 2010 9:07 pm

As you could imagine I would never support such a thing and that guy is a complete idiot that has no clue how the internet works. His suggestion that they have random draw of the "top 25 sites" would open a huge amount of abuse from companies that could pay to get their site on top. It's big business now and would become huge business under such a law. How would you even bgin to decide who's the top 25? Dumbass's abound in government especially where technology is concerned.

In any event what he is discussing is similar to (or is) the Fairness Doctrine which is not related to Net Neutrality.

 
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Post by pvolcko » Thu. May. 20, 2010 2:11 am

How the hell can the FCC just up and reclassify a closed network medium (cable and/or fiber networks) as being common carrier? Doesn't the congress at least have to legislate that change? They are literally pulling the rug out from under these cable and fiber network owners. For years and years they've been encouraged to build up their networks, now, when there is some actual competition going on (DSL, satellite, cable, the rise of competitive fiber networks, coming WiMax, the emergence of cellular broadband for mobile devices, semi-public and muni wifi networks, etc.) they are going to ram it in the ass of this companies by forcing them to sell wholesale bandwidth, perhaps reconfigure their networks to support such bandwidth sales, and probably tie their hands in coming up with competitive changes given all the competition that appears to be occurring and is on the horizon?

All because we're concerned about the phantom issue of net neutrality? Again, there has only been one really well known case of a neutrality infringement: Comcast throttling file sharing app traffic. And they were pilloried in the press, the net, and their customers and flipped the switch back to where it was. The market in action.

For this we're going to screw over a multi-billion dollar industry, grant who knows how much more power to the feds to regulate not only the disposition and access to the networks by wholesale purchasers, but possibly the traffic on them? At least while the traffic and controls are in the hands of the provider companies, you have the courts and the feds ostensibly on your side. Once the feds declare it a common carrier and get the regulatory power that comes with that, the feds and courts no long are on our side, they are on their own side, the side where insider business of politics almost always ends up mattering far more than the people.


 
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Post by Yanche » Thu. May. 20, 2010 8:50 am

pvolcko wrote:How the hell can the FCC just up and reclassify a closed network medium (cable and/or fiber networks) as being common carrier? Doesn't the congress at least have to legislate that change?
I agree. If the FCC does reclassify the Internet carriers as a public utility it will be challenged in court. Perhaps it's just a tactic to get Congress to address the information net neutrality issue. The more important roll government should play is making high speed Internet available to almost all. It's an issue much like rural electrification and universal telephone access a generation ago. Electrification and telephone access were easy to define. The ever changing Internet is more difficult to define and providing universal availability seems impossible. The monopoly telephone companies defined precisely the ISDN data network and had a plan to make it available to all. However, there was never universally availabity before Internet technology passed it by. The Internet is at least an order of magnitude more difficult if not impossible.

 
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Post by pvolcko » Thu. May. 20, 2010 12:25 pm

There are a great many people who have access who choose not to purchase it. In all these cases except a relative few it is a value judgment on the part of the occupant to not get it. Some simply don't see the value in having internet access. They have a point, it is not vital to living by any stretch. It provides no emergency services. It doesn't make someone in the US who is not reachable suddenly reachable (mail, phone/cell, etc. all provide this just fine). It doesn't heat the home or keep the lights on. There are myriad other sources of "information" from newspapers to books and magazines to TV and movies, many of which are available for free via public libraries or grabbing discarded items from others or at cheap rates on bargain bins in stores.

I do not want to see the FCC or some government agency/body define access by how many actually have it in their home. It isn't vital to living in any way, the education of the youth, or any other measure that has lead to declaration of common carrier or public utility status before. Indeed, as our President recently stated, it can be a huge distraction and work against the kind of learning environment some people want to set up for their children or in their own lives. Most people who do not have it simply decide they don't want it at the price it is available to them. Some few of these people can't afford any option available to them, but most of them chose other things (cell phones, cable tv, central air conditioning, to have a car instead of using public transit, to have a second car when one might do, to pay for lawn care or annual landscaping, to pay for plowing service, to pave their driveway instead, to own a boat, to collect baskets, etc.).

On the flip side, there are some who want it, but they live where it isn't available to them in a high speed, low latency form. They have satellite and dialup available to them, but no one has strung a coaxial cable or a fiber drop to their curb. Some could get access through mobile broadband options from cellular companies. WiMax and other wireless options are being developed and may offer another option before too long. Forcing companies to provide probably highly subsidized access it not a good use of money. These people choose to live out in the sticks or they live in exceptionally low income urban areas where the people have a lot more to worry about than getting a big fat *censored* pipe hooked up in their living rooms. Both generally have access to the internet through public kiosks, public libraries, in schools for the kids, etc. And they usually have lower speed but still broadband options, but again either choose against it for other things or can not afford it (yet still have public/free options available).

There's also the problem of the connection only being half of what's needed. You also need a computer, many of these same people chose not to get one or can't afford one and that isn't something we can really address through regulation or legislation. And nor should we try to. There are low cost options out there. Many donation centers and charity programs take old systems and make them available to low income families. Many companies will wipe old systems and give them away or recycle them, nothing stopping them from running them into these charity organizations, many already do.

 
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