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has scheduled an April 25 vote to restore net neutrality rules similar to the ones introduced during the Obama era and repealed under former President Trump.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.
[...] 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.
Lol, Okay! (Score:4, Funny)
Don't mind me as I switch to the new fiber co. laying their cable in town.
Um... who's "they"? (Score:3, Informative)
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
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occasionally AC comes out with a zinger
Re:Um... who's "they"? (Score:4, Interesting)
We currently provide internet for 5 municipally owned fiber deployments, and we're definitely not Comcast.
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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
Re:Um... who's "they"? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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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?
Re:Um... who's "they"? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
That's a big change then (Score:3)
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.
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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.
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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.
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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! (Score:2)
make it an utility then !
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Also - for everyone playing the litigation game they should be aware that it can go both ways.
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Others and I too, but we're still waiting for it! :(
Nationalize telecom (Score:5, Informative)
Re: Nationalize telecom (Score:5, Interesting)
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).
Re: Nationalize telecom (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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
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'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.
Re: Nationalize telecom (Score:2)
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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
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Re: Nationalize telecom (Score:2)
You don't have to have the Fed do it (Score:4, Insightful)
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?
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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
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That may be true where you live; I wouldn't know. I spent several decades getting medical care from the VA in Los Angeles and with few exceptions all of that care was good. (The main exception being one clinic at the facility in Northridge that couldn't be bothered seeing patients within an hour o
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I'm glad your experience has been good. And I'm not saying there aren't bright spots, or that all VA clinics are bad. But there are very serious problems.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/u... [nbcnews.com]
https://www.ossoff.senate.gov/... [senate.gov]
https://www.military.com/daily... [military.com]
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Yes, there are, in a small minority of VA establishments. And those are the only ones non-veterans ever hear about because most people are only interested in bad news not good.
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You seem to have a lot of statistics at your disposal. How small is a "small minority"? Or are you just extrapolating from your own personal experience?
My veteran friends, and I have a good number of them, avoid VA hospitals and clinics if at all possible. And when they do have to go for something as simple as a regular doctor visit, it ends up being an all-day affair.
Yes, the news media does focus on the bad, because that's what sells. But they don't normally turn "a small minority" of clinics with problem
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And I too have a number of friends who use the VA and find it quite acceptable. It may just be a matter of which facilities you use. Where did your friends use the VA?
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The location of my friends, or your friends, isn't really relevant. You seem to be extrapolating your good experience, to be a good representation of the VA in general. There are bound to be bright spots, maybe you've been lucky enough to find them. To understand the VA's performance as a whole, research is necessary, not just anecdotes. And I cited three articles based on research, I didn't make it up.
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Location is pretty relevant because the VA has so few locations. It simply shouldn't exist except as an administrative body, like Medicare (CMS) where they are in charge of paying for health care, not providing it, because they create the problem that you have to go to them for some kinds of care and they are geographically limited. I took my father to the VA a couple times, it was a two hour drive to the nearest one. And then he got care he could have received fifteen minutes away if he'd had Medicare inst
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I agree with you! It's an example of what happens when the government provides things. Decisions are made for political reasons, rather than for the best interest of the "customer," or in this case, the patient. And because it's government, it's really, really hard to change the process once it's established.
Medicare may do a better job on this particular front, but it has its own issues, such as many doctors choosing not to participate because of low reimbursement rates.
If you weren't dealing with a govern
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most VA facilities are very good
You keep saying that, but I don't think you have done actual research to establish this. Do you have a citation? (I provided three citations to the contrary.)
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I believe your experiences. I just don't believe they are representative.
As for the news, yes, they look for bad stuff. But if you know what to look for, you can discover nuggets of unvarnished truth. Such as a claims backlog of more than 600,000 claims that have been delayed by more than four months. https://www.npr.org/templates/... [npr.org].
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That one, I know, is true, or at least was. I don't know the current status but I do know that it was true a year or so ago and why. Congress passed the PACT Act into law, easing the requirements for people like me who never had boots on the ground in 'Nam to get certain disorders considered Agent Orange related, increased the number of illnesses qualifying and specifying that being within (I think) twe
Re: Nationalize telecom (Score:2)
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What specifically is better than what "civilians" get?
I've been in the civilian system for decades, with numerous different insurance providers along the way. It's not a perfect system, to be sure. But would I trade it for a government-run hospital or clinic? No way! When I walk into my doctor's office for a 3:00 appointment, my appointment actually starts at 3:00, not 5:30. I'm in and out in less than half an hour. All the services I need, such as lab work, X-Rays, or MRIs, are available right there in the
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When I walk into my doctor's office for a 3:00 appointment, my appointment actually starts at 3:00, not 5:30.
Where is this magical medical center? My experience of doctors in several states, going back decades is that, if you have an appointment at 3:00, the one thing you know is that it isn't going to start at 3:00.
I have experienced both healthcare in the US and the UK's NHS. The differences are that:
1. The US healthcare is expensive.
2. The US healthcare is delivered in locations with nicer furnishing.
3. You are much more likely to get unnecessary and expensive health services in the US.
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Where is this magical medical center?
https://www.kelsey-seybold.com... [kelsey-seybold.com]
Yeah, I've heard a lot about NHS.
https://www.theguardian.com/so... [theguardian.com]
https://www.bbc.com/news/healt... [bbc.com]
https://theconversation.com/ra... [theconversation.com]
https://www.middleeasteye.net/... [middleeasteye.net]
It seems NHS has a lot of problems too, just a different set of problems.
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I have the best link, especially regarding the Guardian story:
https://www.theguardian.com/co... [theguardian.com]
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Interesting that you cited an opinion piece.
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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)
Wouldn't it be neat if they spent the money on infrastructure upgrades rather than on lawyers?
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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.
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Lawyers are cheaper.
what a load of crap (Score:5, Interesting)
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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.
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Fix (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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VLANS also work. All we need are layer 3 switches in the neighborhoods.
Bandwidth fees (Score:2)
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.
if they had to follow utility meter rules then cap (Score:2)
if they had to follow utility meter rules then caps will be gone as it will be to much work for Comcast to have an meter that the state can ok and is at the customs home.
It's 2024... (Score:2)
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...
Re: It's 2024... (Score:2)
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I just read USA had privatised firefighters back in the day... swindling the general public for a few bucks is just fundamental to the american dream
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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
Lawsuits, but Not The Ones They Want (Score:4, Funny)
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.
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The US Gov't has a $6T annual budget (Score:1)
Ugh, not this crap again (Score:2)
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.
Re: Ugh, not this crap again (Score:2)
On the contrary; I saw better stability.
Competition is the answer (Score:2)
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
Truth in Advertising (Score:2)
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.
the same cable companies (Score:2)
Time for public fiber (Score:2)
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.