FCC Under Fire for Net Neutrality

[admin]

The fight for net neutrality is ON! Soon after the Federal Communications Commission announced it will formalize net neutrality rules – the FCC immediately drew fire from all sides. Republicans in Congress want to pull funding to the FCC while Comcast and AT&T promise an apocalypse of Internet traffic congestion and unsafe service will be the true cost of new regulation.


Discuss "FCC Under Fire for Net Neutrality" here. Read the article.

[krzywica]

Comcast would be the single biggest violator of Net Neutrality if it were to be instituted. Thats why they are freaking out. And ATT sees Comcast getting away with it so they would like to follow suit.

[Amherst]

Comcast would be the single biggest violator of Net Neutrality if it were to be instituted. Thats why they are freaking out. And ATT sees Comcast getting away with it so they would like to follow suit.

Let's not forget to throw Ver!zon into the mix, they are up and coming with the new f!os service and do not care for our internet well being.

[Xargos]

Without Net Neutrality, Internet providers can and do get away with providing a lower grade of service than they advertise and the consumer pays for. This has already been seen by plenty of Netflix subscribers.

I don't know about anyone else, but I like to get what I pay for without a bunch of ifs, ands, and buts attached.

[ivseenbetter]

Go net neutrality! Heck, let all the providers stop investing in their network. Let the p0rn industry subsidize modernization to the current networks...they are probably making more money off the internet than anybody else.

[Wayde Robson]

I honestly tried to be impartial and express the "other" side. It seemed every tech blog in the universe was simply sounding off the same thing - net neutrality laws are a necessity. My first impulse is to agree and simply carry the call.

But, I wanted to at least try to get inside the head of those Republican regulators who were opposed. I tried to express their side fairly.

I didn't mention this in the article - but if you look at the states the six Repub Senators are from, none of them are tech-states.

South Carolina is close, Raleigh in NC is a tech savvy district. There is no way a NC Sen is going to oppose Net Neutrality. Nothing against places like SC and ND - but man... to oppose Net Neutrality they must have no prospect of nurturing small tech start-up firms.

I live in Waterloo Ontario, Canada which is very big into tech, software of every ilk.

I can't say enough for Net Neutrality. Sure, it needs to be fair to investors in fiber optic infrastructure like ATT and Comcast. But, holy crap... the future of the US (and Canada) remaining a technically relevant into the future depends on it.

Otherwise the next Apple will be a South Korean company - the next Microsoft will be Japanese.

[FirstReflection]

Net neutrality laws are a necessity. We absolutely cannot rely upon the "free" market to regulate these huge ISP companies. In the ideal model of the "free" market, one or more competitors would offer non-throttled access for a reasonable price and the vast majority of consumers would flock to them, forcing all other ISPs to offer the best service possible. But in the REAL world, they do not actually compete like that. They are all so big that, collectively, they can squash or buy up any smaller company that offers customers a better service and they essentially collude to all offer the same crappy service and the customers are left with no alternatives! Can't call it a monopoly because they are all separate companies. But when they all offer the same, restricted service, it's tantamount to the same thing!

On the other hand though, surely provisions must be allowed that would make it legal for ISPs to curtail illegal activity. A HUGE amount of current internet traffic is illegal file sharing of copyrighted material. So much of the support for net neutrality comes from the bittorrent users who simply do not want to see their free and illegal content pool dry up! I'm no fan of the over-inflated retail prices of music, movies and games. But I also do not agree what-so-ever with the pirating of free, copyrighted content. I would like to see the content makers lower their prices to the point where it is essentially less hassle to just buy the content legally than download it illegally. But ISPs should still have the legal right to hault illegal file sharing and net neutrality should not extend to illegal activity.

[krzywica]

Let's not forget to throw Ver!zon into the mix, they are up and coming with the new f!os service and do not care for our internet well being.

They offer some of the best service available today in the US. Pioneering the to the door fiber service. I wish I was in an area that offered it.

[3db]

Net neutrality laws are a necessity. We absolutely cannot rely upon the "free" market to regulate these huge ISP companies. In the ideal model of the "free" market, one or more competitors would offer non-throttled access for a reasonable price and the vast majority of consumers would flock to them, forcing all other ISPs to offer the best service possible. But in the REAL world, they do not actually compete like that. They are all so big that, collectively, they can squash or buy up any smaller company that offers customers a better service and they essentially collude to all offer the same crappy service and the customers are left with no alternatives! Can't call it a monopoly because they are all separate companies. But when they all offer the same, restricted service, it's tantamount to the same thing!

On the other hand though, surely provisions must be allowed that would make it legal for ISPs to curtail illegal activity. A HUGE amount of current internet traffic is illegal file sharing of copyrighted material. So much of the support for net neutrality comes from the bittorrent users who simply do not want to see their free and illegal content pool dry up! I'm no fan of the over-inflated retail prices of music, movies and games. But I also do not agree what-so-ever with the pirating of free, copyrighted content. I would like to see the content makers lower their prices to the point where it is essentially less hassle to just buy the content legally than download it illegally. But ISPs should still have the legal right to hault illegal file sharing and net neutrality should not extend to illegal activity.

It would be really interessting to see figures indicating how traffic is generated by he downloading of copyright protected material.

I do support net neutraility for the following reasons:
1.) I want to get what I payed for. Anything less is stealing from the subscriber.
2.) It allows companies to develop better/faster technologies because of competition. Keep the brains in North America and prevent offshoring of intellectual property to foreign countries. Its bad enough that very few things are being maufactured in North America.

[andy_c]

Network neutrality is an interesting subject. I didn't know anything about it until a couple of years ago. I'm an AT&T shareholder, and they sent out a letter encouraging stockholders to write their representatives and urge them to oppose network neutrality. This sounded suspicious to me, so I did a bit of googling and found a good article on the subject in Wikipedia and several others elsewhere.

After reading a lot of information about it, I ended up being in favor of network neutrality. When I was done, I did email my representative, instead urging them to support network neutrality.

One thing that has happened is ISPs that are also phone service providers have in some cases blocked VoIP traffic on their networks - a clear conflict of interest. This is currently going on in South Korea according to the Wikipedia article. Not good!