Ars Technica:
The Federal Communications Commission today voted to enforce net neutrality rules that prevent Internet providers—including cellular carriers—from blocking or throttling traffic or giving priority to Web services in exchange for payment.
The most controversial part of the FCC’s decision reclassifies fixed and mobile broadband as a telecommunications service, with providers to be regulated as common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act. This decision brings Internet service under the same type of regulatory regime faced by wireline telephone service and mobile voice, though the FCC is forbearing from stricter utility-style rules that it could also apply under Title II.
This is a big step but the fight isn’t over yet.
The fight for what?
More expensive services? Less dynamism in services/infrastructure? Less freedom? There are serious arguments that all of these are the likely long-term effects of today’s decision.
I think this is a sad day.
The FCC took an ax to a problem to which it could have brought a scalpel.
Worse, it chose to impose 20th century regulations on a 21st century internet.
And worst of all, it did so without releasing the rules to the public. How profoundly disdainful of American citizens this is.
Some “net neutrality” boosters like EFF expressed last minute alarm that FCC might unwisely use the power it’s claiming. Hard to believe. And even harder to believe that they suddenly accept the FCC’s promise of forbearance at face value. With apologies for the obvious exaggeration, it is a bit like accepting Putin’s promise that Russia will forbear on further encroachments in Eastern Europe.
EFF and the other sloaganeers for a “free internet” (that is somehow less so in every sense of the word) will get what they deserve for their short-sightedness. Unforunately, we’ll all get what they deserve too.
The bad news: 10 or 15 years from know, our internet service will be the equivalent of the late 1970s telephone service, when we all had olive rotary phones and paid $10/minute to talk to the next town over.
Good news: you won’t know it, because you won’t have seen the alternative. After all, in the 1970s, we thought we though our phone service was good!
Being a bit of a chicken little today I see.
I have no sympathy for Verizon. The FCC tried a scalpel.
In the first attempt, the FCC bent over backwards (and I think gave away the farm) when they negotiated a complicated deal with the all of cable and telecom companies. Then the second they started to implement it, Verizon sued them. So this is what they get, its pretty clear to everyone that if Verizon had just abided by the original deal they made, internet access would not have been declared a common carrier service.
Honestly, if you have a theoretical objection to anti-discrimination in internet access, go ahead and state it, but your complaint is quite ranty.
PS: If you haven’t seen it, Verizon filed an objection to the ruling in morse code – http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/02/verizon-issues-furious-response-to-fcc-in-morse-code-dated-1934/
the fact that Verizon did sue the FCC, I would think, would be a good indication that the FCC is doing what is correct the the people and the nation and ULTIMATELY Verizon and any other business.
Craptiolism or even free enterprise is good in some respects, yet when business is in bed with the government, one has to wonder what happened to our elected representation.
Captiolism’s natural state is rarely “free”, but it is often (and wrongly) to return the highest shareholder value over a specified (and short) period of time.
It’s good to have an FCC chairman that sounds less like a lobbyist.
The irony is that’s exactly what he was before becoming Chair.
I wonder what makes this guy different.
Yes, a little bit of a Chicken Little, I admit, but what better time for a (mild) rant than the day of the an agency makes a momentous decision without revealing their plan to the public!? I’d say a good-natured rant is in order!
I don’t mean to be evasive–I do oppose “anti-discrimination” as you put it. Not all data is used the same and needs the same priority. I think “fast lanes” are a good idea, and they insure that the costs associated with bandwidth-hogging uses are apportioned properly.
I think the Netflix/Comcast deal was a good thing–Netflix customers would end up paying for the extra bandwidth and investment in extra infrastructure, rather than having the cost spread among those (like my Mom) who do nothing but check email.
“neutrality,” “anti-discrimination,” “open/free” are all wonderful slogans and have important applications–but I don’t think they are as meaningful in the telecom debate.
Thanks for pointing this out. Pretty amusing!
Exactly. “Regulatory capture” comes to mind.
Verizon and Comcast and some others will do quite well in
the new regime, just as Ma Bell did before deregulation. Regulation
tends to “fix” in place the dominant market players and erect barriers
for smaller players, protecting them from competition.
This
is why many businesses counter-intuitively end up favoring more rather
than less regulation (To take a recent non-telecom example, this is why
Wal-Mart loved the Affordable Care Act’s employer mandate; they can
afford it, Mom and Pop can’t.)
If you don’t like lobbyists, don’t look now–yesterday’s decision was like passing a Full Employment Act for telecom lobbyists!
When you take decisions out of the marketplace and put them in the hands of the agency, the stakes become very high, and the larger players have an increased incentive to hire specialists who know the regulations, know how to work the regulations, and know how to persuade the agency regulators–and the congressional legislators.
You’re describing bad behavior as a reaction to attempts to reign in market players who’ve been allowed to get too big by a polluted campaign-finance system. And then suggesting we should simply reward that bad behavior instead of trying to curb it.
When you deregulate the marketplace, you get less competition, collusion in price-fixing, and eventually regional monopolies. The “free market” is the reason why our telecom choices are an embarrassment compared to the rest of the developed world.
I’ll gladly concede that competitive markets are imperfect. I simply believe that they are better than the alternative. (Even if sometimes only marginally so!)
But I think that you’re at least partially misdiagnosing the problem.
To the extent our current system is less competitive than we’d like, it’s mainly an because it was grafted upon a long-standing monopoly system (Ma Bell).
The Telecom Act of 1996 tried to address this by allowing competitors to use existing infrastructure for a (legislated) price, but it’s a hard nut to crack and the solution was obviously imperfect.
Beyond this, many broadband providers are still government-protected monopolies. I live in a populous suburb of a major city, and can only resort to Comcast for high-speed internet. (Admittedly, it faces some competition with Dish for the TV market.)
I’d be willing to bet you that most of the areas where monopolies have developed they have been specifically propped up by governments (not just federal, but state and local as well).
May I leave you with one more point? Was the “bad” behavior in this case really all that “bad” or all that pervasive? So much to suggest a need for a huge shift in regulatory structure? I do suspect that the FCC has overreacted a bit here.
Thanks for hearing me out.
I’ll gladly read any response you’re kind enough to leave, but be forewarned: as much as I’ve enjoyed discussing this issue on this thread, I can’t devote more time to it. Got to get back to the day job. Cheers!
let me paste you a little story about net neutrality:
…did commercial railcars vanish into antiquity? the trucking industry? nope, both are alive and profitable today, despite regulation. big oil, too.
I had a bunch of work today, too.
Yes, the bad behavior really was all that bad, short memories notwithstanding. That government regulators were—and are—undergoing a systematic and steady increase in corruptibility doesn’t negate the need for good regulation. These are two separate issues that need to be addressed by different arguments.
Unfettered capitalism results in feudalism. If you can make a good living by sucking up to nouveau royalty with neolibertarian rhetoric, bully for you.
Thank you.
This is a good story. I’d love to research it further if you could produce the source(s).
My point is not that industries will vanish or even lose profitability.
My point is that the bigger players capture the regulators (1900 food and drug regulation, modern fuel regulation, etc.) and create outcomes that are great for them, worse for smaller competitors, and worse for customers in the long term.
You’ve addressed one of these, implicitly–smaller competitors.
But were customers better served? When transporters were required to pay a uniform rate, did that cause the typical customer to pay more? Did it affect the speed/quality of the service that was offered?
It’s about customers, not companies.
Re Netflix: Good hypothetical, but the fact that this hasn’t happened tends to suggest that the FCC was at least premature. But if Comcast did this, its customers would switch to the competitor (if they wanted Netflix). If there’s no competitor, that’s the problem to fix.
I’m not accusing anyone of corruption/corruptibility. I’m just pointing out some realities about the regulatory system that need to be weighed honestly against the assumed benefits. There are costs to whatever method we choose.
I’m not sure what neo-libertarianism is. I just think property, contract, tort, antitrust, Uniform Commercial Code, Telecom Act, and even the FCC, and myriad other tools are available for a more proportionate response.