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United States Communications

Cable Lobby Vows 'Years of Litigation' To Avoid Bans on Blocking and Throttling (arstechnica.com) 91

An anonymous reader shares a report: The Federal Communications Commission has scheduled an April 25 vote to restore net neutrality rules similar to the ones introduced during the Obama era and repealed under former President Trump. The text of the pending net neutrality order wasn't released today. The FCC press release said it will prohibit broadband providers "from blocking, slowing down, or creating pay-to-play Internet fast lanes" and "bring back a national standard for broadband reliability, security, and consumer protection."

[...] Numerous consumer advocacy groups praised the FCC for its plan today. Lobby groups representing Internet providers expressed their displeasure. While there hasn't been a national standard since then-Chairman Ajit Pai led a repeal in 2017, Internet service providers still have to follow net neutrality rules because California and other states impose their own similar regulations. The broadband industry's attempts to overturn the state net neutrality laws were rejected in court.

Although ISPs seem to have been able to comply with the state laws, they argue that the federal standard will hurt their businesses and consumers. "Reimposing heavy-handed regulation will not just hobble network investment and innovation, it will also seriously jeopardize our nation's collective efforts to build and sustain reliable broadband in rural and unserved communities," cable lobbyist Michael Powell said today. Powell, the CEO of cable lobby group NCTA-The Internet & Television Association, was the FCC chairman under President George W. Bush. Powell said the FCC must "reverse course to avoid years of litigation and uncertainty" in a reference to the inevitable lawsuits that industry groups will file against the agency.

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Cable Lobby Vows 'Years of Litigation' To Avoid Bans on Blocking and Throttling

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  • Lol, Okay! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Sebby ( 238625 ) on Wednesday April 03, 2024 @03:04PM (#64367960)

    Don't mind me as I switch to the new fiber co. laying their cable in town.

    • Um... who's "they"? (Score:3, Informative)

      by rsilvergun ( 571051 )
      who owns that Fiber? If it's your local gov't then they'll sell it to Comcast after some palms are greased unless you *and* your neighbors paying very close attention. If it's a small private entity Comcast'll buy them out. If it's a large private entity it's probably Comcast or Google, and Google tends to abandon projects as soon as they're not profitable.

      You're dealing with a monopoly. You can't vote with your wallet. This is a problem that requires political action. You need to unpack the courts. The
      • by DamnOregonian ( 963763 ) on Wednesday April 03, 2024 @04:04PM (#64368160)
        Nope.
        We currently provide internet for 5 municipally owned fiber deployments, and we're definitely not Comcast.
        • Serious question, how do you keep your local politicians from being bought off (or just losing their election to someone who is), or worse, having the State Legislatures get corrupted and pass laws preventing you from doing Muni-broadband.

          Any time my area's tried it that's what happens. I pay $120/mo for unlimited cable and it's usable enough but I know from SEC filings that it costs about $20/mo for them to provide the service, so I know I'm being fleeced, but with the political situation I can't do any
          • by DamnOregonian ( 963763 ) on Wednesday April 03, 2024 @04:19PM (#64368204)

            Serious question, how do you keep your local politicians from being bought off (or just losing their election to someone who is), or worse, having the State Legislatures get corrupted and pass laws preventing you from doing Muni-broadband.

            Pray, and play the game. We're big enough to compete for bids as ISPs in these networks, but we're not lobbying-money-big.
            We pulled out of 2 networks due to local corruption. It's a problem, but it's not all of them.

            Any time my area's tried it that's what happens. I pay $120/mo for unlimited cable and it's usable enough but I know from SEC filings that it costs about $20/mo for them to provide the service, so I know I'm being fleeced, but with the political situation I can't do anything about it.

            Oof. We offer ~5Gbps (symmetrical) for that price point.

            Another interesting factor that's common in their networks, on the physical side, is the contracting we're forced to accept in order to play. It's a contract that Comcast wouldn't touch with a kilometer long pole.

            • We pulled out of 2 networks due to local corruption.

              That must have cost you some money, and I commend you for putting your principles first and your bottom line second. However, I am curious about one thing: what affect did that have on the two networks involved?
              • by DamnOregonian ( 963763 ) on Wednesday April 03, 2024 @06:24PM (#64368492)

                That must have cost you some money, and I commend you for putting your principles first and your bottom line second. However, I am curious about one thing: what affect did that have on the two networks involved?

                Unknown. We walked away. At the time, we were the sole ISP that had signed up to provide service on the network, and were actively involved in the design of the interface between the L2 network and the L3 ISP networks. I hope they succeeded, but it wasn't looking good.

                We're fairly new to the "ISP in a municipally owned and built network" game (about 3 years), but we have several municipal networks that we built and operate though (L1-L3), so we've got quite a lot of experience in the field, and know when to walk away when the design is going into the toilet because too many assholes want their consulting hours.

            • Comcast used to carpet bomb lawyers if a town in podunk Arkansas set up a shared router in town square. I remember seeing /. articles on the subject.

              Comcast doesn't usually offer a contract. They just get laws passed saying you can't have municipal broadband and if you can't pay them to move in you just don't get internet. Usually they get the laws passed by the state legislature which are extremely corrupt in a lot of states.
              • Comcast used to carpet bomb lawyers if a town in podunk Arkansas set up a shared router in town square. I remember seeing /. articles on the subject.

                Yup, me too.

                Comcast doesn't usually offer a contract. They just get laws passed saying you can't have municipal broadband and if you can't pay them to move in you just don't get internet. Usually they get the laws passed by the state legislature which are extremely corrupt in a lot of states.

                I've read that too.
                I'm not familiar with every law in every state regarding the matter, but I can tell you we operate in 4 states- west coast, east coast, and midwest, so they don't own everywhere.

            • We just had a local company called Ezee Fiber roll out 8 gig for about $120. I'm only paying for 1 gig at the moment which is only like $60 whereas with Comcast I was paying at least $70 for up to 1 gig down and 42 mbps up plus an additional $30 for unlimited bandwidth. Then of course about a month later AT&T started rolling out fiber too. They hit a gas line about 4 houses down but luckily they haven't "accidentally" cut my fiber connection.
              • We do up to 10gbps, but we don't match 8 for $120. That's a damn good price.
                I've been involved in buildout projects in 8 cities. None quite as large as Houston, though.

                Fiber cuts happen. Nobody is doing it on purpose.
                We work with contractors to do the actual construction, and 811 locates are far from perfect.
      • Political action? What in heavens name makes anybody think that politicians and bureaucrats are morally upstanding enough to be trusted? Of course they will take advantage of more power. Not sure I have an answer here - other than to reduce monopolies as best we can - but the notion that we can invest such power into the hands of federal agency bureaucrats and that power will not eventually be used for their own good at our expense seems utterly ludicrous to me.

    • make it an utility then !

      • by Z00L00K ( 682162 )

        Also - for everyone playing the litigation game they should be aware that it can go both ways.

    • by antdude ( 79039 )

      Others and I too, but we're still waiting for it! :(

  • Nationalize telecom (Score:5, Informative)

    by Baloo Uriza ( 1582831 ) <baloo@ursamundi.org> on Wednesday April 03, 2024 @03:11PM (#64367982) Homepage Journal
    Just condemn all the companies and nationalize them. Weve already seen with electricity, healthcare, housing, fire departments and transportation that for profit corporations are entirely incompetent at running infrastructure. So relieve them of the burden.
    • by Frank Burly ( 4247955 ) on Wednesday April 03, 2024 @03:27PM (#64368036)

      I don't like rent seekers, but I hate the idea of the federal government operating all last-mile Internet access.

      Maybe just treat ISPs more like utilities (like the FCC wants to do).

      • by dgatwood ( 11270 ) on Wednesday April 03, 2024 @03:45PM (#64368102) Homepage Journal

        I don't like rent seekers, but I hate the idea of the federal government operating all last-mile Internet access.

        Maybe just treat ISPs more like utilities (like the FCC wants to do).

        The government (local, state, or federal) only needs to own and maintain the physical infrastructure. It should let companies compete to actually light up the fibers.

        If the only cost of starting an ISP in a town were a few thousand bucks to put a router and switches into the local central office plus a few hundred bucks a month to rent the rack space, you'd have a dozen ISPs in every town, and if you didn't like your ISP's policies, you could just start your own. The only thing really preventing that level of competition is the exorbitant cost of stringing up all the redundant fiber.

        • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

          If the only cost of starting an ISP in a town were a few thousand bucks to put a router and switches into the local central office

          It's quite a bit more than that, actually.
          About 30k minimum for us to get a PoP off the ground on a municipally owned network of any reasonable size.
          We have toyed with low-cost solutions in some networks (DPDK+VPP, and various commercial offerings of that with pretty packaging) and while they work, the expertise requirement is quite high, meaning as a long term solution, they're questionable. I think they'll get to the point where they're not festering piles of jank sooner or later, but we're not quite th

          • by dgatwood ( 11270 )

            If the only cost of starting an ISP in a town were a few thousand bucks to put a router and switches into the local central office

            It's quite a bit more than that, actually.

            About 30k minimum for us to get a PoP off the ground on a municipally owned network of any reasonable size.

            Thirty is a few, at least for some large value of "a few".

            The point is that it isn't the millions of dollars you'd spend to run fiber past every building in a city, and most of the costs scale linearly with the number of customers rather than linearly with square miles of coverage area, so a small ISP at least theoratically has the ability to compete, whereas that would not be the case with any non-wireless ISP that has to run its own lines.

            • I can say I have not seen 30 described as a few in 40 years ;)

              But sure.
              I will say though, we have also done full builds from the dirt up- and ya, it's expensive, but you borrow that money, and so do other people in our business.
              • by Anonymous Coward

                I can say I have not seen 30 described as a few in 40 years ;)

                That's because you missed the original point that the current cost is "not for sale"

                'Compared to unobtainable, yes 30k is cheap.
                'Compared to unobtainable, 30 billion is cheap.
                30 trillion would be labeled expensive as you leave the realm of companies and enter a market of only governments.
                Yet 30 trillion is still measurably better than unobtainable.

                30k means that anyone who has bought a home has had the ability to start THREE new ISPs
                This is a feat that has been impossible since the early 90s, made possible

                • 'Compared to unobtainable, yes 30k is cheap.

                  You moved the goalposts.
                  Compared to unobtainable, 30k is not a few.

                  'Compared to unobtainable, 30 billion is cheap.

                  compared to unobtainable, 30 billion is not a few.

                  Read better, AC, and try to keep concepts in your brain long enough to finish formulating a response.

        • No. Private companies shouldn't be involved in this equation whatsoever.
          • They absolutely should. Most successful countries who provide excellent quality cheap infrastructure only nationalise or in some cases even just consolidate under a single government regulated private company the hardware. The same with mobile infrastructure.

            The idea of one government organisation controlling both the infrastructure as well as the end point connection is the stuff of fucking nightmares, and I say that as a general supporter of governments and someone who typically mocks the anti-government

            • Difficulty: Our private companies have proven themselves entirely incompetent of running anything whatsoever.
      • Nationalization just means government takeover, not necessarily federal. And there's not a utility that shouldn't be nationalized, because utilities are infrastructure.
      • by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Wednesday April 03, 2024 @05:44PM (#64368418)
        You just have the Fed right checks for the poor, and let's face it red States and then you have the individual municipalities provide internet service.

        Basically like a utility but without letting a private organization skim 20 or 30% off your tax dollars.

        The thing you have to ask yourself is, is this a universal service that everyone needs? If the answer is yes then you shouldn't privatize it. Because all you're doing is letting some lucky bastard get rich off of something everybody's already paying for. If we're all going to pay for it we might as well run it through the government.

        If you're not comfortable with the government having that much power what makes you comfortable about mega corporations having that much power? Somebody is going to have that power and the only question is are you going to pay an extra 30% and is it going to be a private individual or a democratically elected government?
      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        There is another way: local loop unbundling.

        This is how it works in Europe. The company that owns the local infrastructure has to be separate from the ISPs. If they are one and the same then they have to split the company in two. The one that owns the infrastructure must offer access to it on the same terms to every ISP. Each ISP can then install their own hardware at the local exchange, to serve individual properties. They pay the infrastructure owner a fee that covers maintenance, upgrades, and profit.

        It

    • I love how Americans describe Canada as socialistic (intended as an insult) and yet call for the same thing when big corporations do what it is they are naturally inclined to do. Waiting for a corporation to screw you over for money is like waiting for the tide. It's what the system naturally encourages. Maybe this needs to be a larger discussion on how to hybridize capitalism into incentivized socialism.

  • Just imagine (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Powercntrl ( 458442 ) on Wednesday April 03, 2024 @03:15PM (#64367992) Homepage

    Wouldn't it be neat if they spent the money on infrastructure upgrades rather than on lawyers?

    • This, right here, is why we should never trust corporations with running public infrastructure. It always results in this. We nationalized the fire departments because when they were private, they'd keep an arsonist on staff if they weren't profitable enough. Things got better when we removed the profit motive/potential from that industry. Also compare our railroad system and it's over a century of neglect and decline versus the rest of the developed world, which nationalized their railroads.
      • Also compare our railroad system and it's over a century of neglect and decline versus the rest of the developed world, which nationalized their railroads.

        Their transportation is socialist, ours is fascist [wikipedia.org].

        Next we will look at the literally hundreds of billions given to telcos to build out last mile high speed internet, which they pocketed instead [reddit.com]. Oh look, more fascism. But surely the thin blue line will save us from crime [pressdemocrat.com]! Whoops, it's fascism all the way down. Literally.

    • Lawyers are cheaper.

  • what a load of crap (Score:5, Interesting)

    by LazarusQLong ( 5486838 ) on Wednesday April 03, 2024 @03:17PM (#64368010)
    "...hobble network investment and innovation..." well, I live in rural America and "network investment and innovation..." = $0 frankly they are trying to kill off our access to the internet as far as I can tell.
    • You're not profitable for them.

      Common infrastructure is a really bad thing to build or maintain on a profit basis. You'll see everything done for the city cores, almost everything for the suburbs, and next to nothing for small or remote communities.

      • yes, I understand the economics of this. that is why I believe, like electricity, internet access should be regulated.
      • when I first moved down here, we had dialup... in 2002, then in 2004 we got dsl. in this location, where I no longer live but do work, we barely got 'upgraded' to 4th gen cell service a couple of years ago. Oh, and still other than 4 g cell, DSL is the only other internet option.
      • Which is why we shouldn't let corporations run infrastructure.
  • Fix (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Archangel Michael ( 180766 ) on Wednesday April 03, 2024 @03:43PM (#64368088) Journal

    I have a 100% fix for the last mile problem.

    Local Utility Company, that owns and maintains fiber.

    All fiber brought back to a COLO facility where Vendors offer their services to the local utility customers, directly AT the COLO facility. Choice to the Consumer. The COLO and Fiber are maintained with fees extracted as part of the rental agreement between the vendors and the local Utility CO.

    A consumer purchases service from the vendor(s) of their choice directly, based on their desires and needs. No Government needs to be involved. Increase Options creates competition.

    Its a wonder smart people haven't figured out that Government Franchise Agreements has stagnated the status quo into doing nothing.

    • The problem with this idea is that most of the fiber laid for residential internet services is shared. There isn't an individual fiber coming out of the CO going to each house. There is a single fiber and each house is split off the fiber operating much the same way as a coax cable TV/Internet network operates. Different ISPs would need to run on different wavelengths and there's going to be a limit of how many different wavelengths you can run down that fiber. There is also the fact that the incumbent who
  • Congress really needs to go after this practice. It's essentially a tax by the cable providers for people who stream content and work remotely.

  • And net neutrality STILL isn't resolved?

    And it's pretty hard to argue in 2024 that the internet isn't as much of a utility to society as water/electricity/trash. It should be regulated as such...

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • by caseih ( 160668 )

        Today there are a very small number of private firefighting companies in the US compared to public ones.

        But generally-speaking you have it backwards. The private firefighting companies generally came first, funded by insurance companies, and over time became public institutions. At least in the US and the UK. There's a very long and storied history here, and yes there were time periods (mostly in the 1800s) of despicable things like fire companies refusing to respond to fires that were in their competitor

  • by bartle ( 447377 ) on Wednesday April 03, 2024 @05:45PM (#64368424) Homepage

    The thing that seems ridiculous to me is that these ISPs are getting absolutely hammered by anti-piracy lawsuits that are suing (and winning) for massive sums because the ISPs aren't doing enough to block online piracy. This is really a miserable situation for the ISPs; they either fight these endless lawsuits or start kicking off paying customers (and invite new lawsuits) based on flimsy and questionable evidence.

    The solution here is for these ISPs to finally just accept their status as a regulated business and welcome their inevitable long-term profits. I guess some companies just don't know how to win.

    • hears the thing about the internet. once something is on it no amount of attempts to block it will work.
  • They can handle a few lawsuits by a couple of corporations. IMHO.
  • So many people were up in arms about the repeal of net neutrality but I'll bet nobody noticed any degradation in their data speeds.

  • If you look at the places where new players (Google, municipalities, co-ops etc etc) have entered the market and provided fibre and other high speed internet options, its forced the dinosaurs to improve their service as well in order to compete with the new guy,

    Get rid of all the laws, rules, agreements and other things that artificially limit competition in the market for internet access and let the free market sort it out.

    And in areas where there aren't enough customers to make things viable in a purely f

  • 100 MB/s? Then you can't call it Broadband.

    Discriminate against certain traffic? Then you can't call it Internet.

    And if you are not selling Internet, then you do not qualify for all the legal protections, subsidies and tax breaks associated with the business.

    FTC and FCC already have the tools they need.

  • that refuse to offer channels a la carte? cry me a river. they have done nothing to innovate and only keep raising prices year after year.
  • As opposed to most areas, where you have ZERO choice if you want access - local corporate monopolies.

    Now, the real question is will the cable co's legal fees - because they'll be hiring external lawyers for this* - be more than their profits?

    * Ask me how I know.

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