From FCC Head Wheeler, a Yellow Light For Internet Fast Lanes 149
An anonymous reader writes "FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has decided to back-pedal just a bit on his recent proposal to end the "Open Internet" regulation regime in favor of a system with more liberal rules that could include so-called internet fast lanes, by means of which major ISPs could favor or disfavor different kinds or providers of internet traffic. Says an article at USA Today, 'Wheeler's latest revision doesn't entirely ban Internet fast lanes, leaving room for some public-interest cases like a healthcare company sending electrocardiography results. But unlike his initial proposal last month, Wheeler is proposing to specifically ban certain types of fast-lanes, including prioritization given by ISPs to their subsidiaries that make and stream content, according to an FCC official who wasn't authorized talk about the revisions publicly before the vote. Wheeler is also open to applying some "common carrier" rules that regulate telephone companies, which would result in more stringent oversight of the ISPs in commercial transactions.'" Update: 05/13 16:37 GMT by T : Oops -- I missed this earlier, substantially similar story.
From Wikipedia: (Score:5, Informative)
From Wiki:
Thomas E. Wheeler is the current Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, appointed by President Obama and confirmed by the U.S. Senate in November, 2013. Prior to working at the FCC, Wheeler worked as a venture capitalist and lobbyist for the cable and wireless industry, with positions including President of the National Cable Television Association (NCTA) and CEO of the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association (CTIA).
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A conflict of interest if I ever saw one.
That's a suspected conflict of interest, not an outright one. He may still have a financial interest in a company or have a secret deal. If working in the industry meant you couldn't ever move into government to regulate the industry you'd never get anyone competent to work for the feds. Would you want the FDA to never hire anyone with a medical degree?
Re:From Wikipedia: (Score:5, Informative)
A conflict of interest is "I used to work for a telephone company, now I head for the FCC, and will work for the industry AGAIN when I no longer run the FCC"
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Is "I'm buddies with all the cable lobbyists, I'm in charge of setting regulations on the internet, and when I quit the FCC I'll get a fat job as a lobbyist again as long as I keep them happy" considered a conflict of interest?
It really seems like it to me. And you got so MAD ....
Further, it seems that the only experience being a cable lobbyist gives you is deregulating your industry.
Face it, you're wrong on this one. Wheeler has conflict of interest coming out of his ass. And I'm not afraid to say it
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A fucking conflict of interest isn't "I used to work for a telephone company, now I work for the FCC!" That's what's known as EXPERIENCE, you fucking imbecile.
Welcome to Slashdot, Mr. Wheeler!
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...It is the cornerstone of President Obama's campaign theme about limiting the influence of special interests. During the campaign, Obama said many times that lobbyists would not run his White House, and the campaign delighted in tweaking rival John McCain for the former lobbyists who worked on McCain's campaign. Obama's ethics proposals specifically spelled out that former lobbyists would not be allowed to "work on regulations or contracts directly and substantially related to their prior employer for two years." On his first full day in office, Obama signed an executive order to that effect. But the order has a loophole — a "waiver" clause that allows former lobbyists to serve. That waiver clause has been used at least three times, and in some cases, the administration allows former lobbyists to serve without a waiver. After examining the administration's actions for the past two months, we have concluded that Obama has broken this promise. See Promise No. 240 for the full details.
http://www.politifact.com/trut... [politifact.com]
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In addition to this, he also promised to defend Net Neutrality once elected, only to do the exact opposite. Kind of like he has done on so many other issues.
I don't know what it is going to take from the Liberals to realize that Obama is GWB's third and fourth terms. It is as if the (D) behind his name creates a Reality Distortion Field beyond even what Jobs was able to generate.
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We're far more pissed about Obama than you are. Take your little reality distortion field back to FOX News.
Why are liberals pissed? Drone strikes on innocents. Drone strikes on Americans without trials. Didn't close Gitmo. Didn't push for universal healthcare. Didn't push for marriage equality. Keeps nominating conservatives to important posts. Defends warrantless wiretapping. Defends secret courts. Doesn't kick congresses ass. "enhanced interogation". Keeps trying to make deals with Republcans who so o
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Yet, every liberal I know would vote for him again. So, you're not that pissed.
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Compared to the batshit crazy choices from the Rs, sure. Compared to an actual Democrat, no.
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Anyone that states, "Trickle Down works", is a liar.
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I've got a rusty machete under my shed I've been marinating in cat pee for 11 years...
Tears of a clown (Score:1)
I have no problem giving awesome speed to their own subsidiary content providers.
I have a problem with deliberately hindering particular providers when their contract with home users says they will provide certain rates of speed that the home user pays for. That is fraud.
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No problem. Their ads will declare (small print)up to(/small print) (large print) OUTRAGEOUS 1000MBPS SPEEDS (/large print). Then, the contract will contain - on page 48 of the fine print that nobody reads - that the ISP can't be held liable for slow downs for any reason even if they purposefully slow down some sites in an effort to get money from those sites.
Would that be fine?
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You CANNOT change the meaning of words in advertisement. You can only advertise minimum data-rates when advertising connection speeds.
Great, this is groundbreaking. All ads now read: OFFERING 0 MBPS! Just because your ISP provides up to X Mbps, doesn't mean whomever you're talking to can actually supply it that fast. If someone connects a server to the internet on a 1200 baud modem, is it my ISP's fault that I can't download faster than several bytes a second? Or, what if I'm trying to access a site that is being DOS'd? Is that *my ISP's* fault? What you're suggesting is a step back, not forward.
I'm not advocating "fast lanes" or non-net
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I have no problem giving awesome speed to their own subsidiary content providers.
I have a problem with deliberately hindering particular providers when their contract with home users says they will provide certain rates of speed that the home user pays for. That is fraud.
If I am reading you right, you disagree with fraud and false advertising, but I repeat myself (and you). I disagree with them too.
The notion that there are not already "internet fast lanes" is puzzling (not directed at you), because there have been ever since the first rate plan gave the consumer a speed or volume choice.
Additionally, the network owner should be the final arbiter on what crosses their network, even if they make decisions we find stupid. Someone else will come along and compete with the
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It's not puzzling. It's just that you don't understand what they are talking about.
You could literally replace your entire post with the sentence:
"I don't know what I'm talking about." and it would have the same meaning.
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No. He doesn't know what he's talking about. :D He's parroting "government bad" and saying that the government is strangling the last mile. in SOME instances he's right. But his view is not balanced, nor is it nuanced enough to accurately reflect what people are saying about net neutrality and what should be done.
The FCC reclassifying the internet as title 2, putting common carrier rules back in place, would fix this issue. Everyone who knows what the !@#$ they're talking about agrees. Then there's you pe
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The notion that there are not already "internet fast lanes" is puzzling (not directed at you), because there have been ever since the first rate plan gave the consumer a speed or volume choice.
You've got it backwards. They want to limit how fast you can consume NetFlix no matter what tier of service you have contracted with your ISP for. If I paid for 50Mb down and Netflix can support that much TO me then my ISP damned well better support 50Mb down for me* at all of their connection points to the internet. *however they handle scaling is up to them, but if they give me certain speeds to their own content, they should have to provide me the same speeds to everything.
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If I'm getting data significantly faster from my ISP's streaming service than from Netflix or Youtube, then something is configured to provide different service levels...and that's the problem.
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If I'm getting data significantly faster from my ISP's streaming service than from Netflix or Youtube, then something is configured to provide different service levels...
No, that's not necessarily true. If the Netflix data has to pass through a choke point to another network provider and is slowed down because of all the other traffic also passing that point, and the ISP's streaming service is contained entirely on the ISP's net, then it isn't a configuration issue, it's an amount of bandwidth available issue.
And since many people confuse the On Demand kind of streaming service from Comcast with the purely internet based services, then you need to remember that On Demand
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Except that people have actually [mattvukas.com] confirmed [mattvukas.com] ComCast was deliberately degrading Netflix. Hell, Level 3 squarely pointed the finger at Comcast [bgr.com]. Comcast has been just selectively letting it's peer connections languish to 'punish' certain peers. Level 3 specifically since it's part of Netflix's CDN...
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Except that people have actually confirmed ComCast was deliberately degrading Netflix.
It is a shame that you didn't read the second link you included. It is rather specific in saying:
That's the choke point problem, NOT Comcast deliberately throttling Netflix. As for proof:
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And this is the biggest single problem with "net neutrality". It's confusing.
The issue is not whether I can buy a faster pipe, or even whether VOIP gets priority over torrenting Linux distros. Neither of those are going to cause problems. As long as I can download from company A as fast as from company B, there
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The problem is when, say, Comcast slows down legal streaming movie sites because they want to sell you their cable service in addition, or if NewMovieCorp.com gets worse bandwidth than Netflix. That hurts competition.
I fully agree that is a problem, see my statement about false advertising. As for hurting competition, dishonest dealing is a bad but quick way for competitors to the swindler to emerge.
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That means access to land. Access to land means permission of governments: it is governments that turn land into "property".
And it is the same governments that take that property and turn it into rights of way. One hand giveth, the other taketh away.
if you don't like the railways, you can't start laying down tracks next to Amtrak's and Conrail's.
However, you can lay in another fiber.
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However, you can lay in another fiber.
And if property owners are not forced to let them lay it free across their property, the actual cost of the service will be better reflected in the price. The truly efficient will prevail, and those who are just good at sucking up to or bribing officials will wither.
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More likely there just won't be any services at all.
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More likely there just won't be any services at all.
The notion that if the government does not do it, it will not get done at all is proven wrong all the time. Like with trash collection, fire service, or ambulance service in many places right here in the US.
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Actually, all of those are county services here. Meanwhile, none of those would require negotiating 4 million private contracts for land use to clear right of way.
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And, fortunately for your argument, they all use privately negotiated rights of way across people's property rather than public roads.
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And if property owners are not forced to let them lay it free across their property,
There are two phrases you need to become familiar with. One is "easement". The other is "rights of way". The government has already stepped in and taken the rights of way, all they need to do is grant access to them to the private company who wants to put in fiber.
At that point a third term comes into play: "franchise".
So, there already exists a system for getting access to the land to install another fiber, and it is in use. Property owners have, at this point, very little say over what gets installed, e
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How do folks like you manage to so completely ignore observational evidence? It is a natural talent or a learned skill?
Yea, observational evidence like two stores right next to each other, one is packed from giving great service, the other empty because they suck.
Two parallel roads, one private and well maintained that charges a toll, the other a free mess nobody wants to use.
Government approved monopoly wires going into a factory, that is constantly running generators because the utility power quality sucks.
People choosing to use Starbucks WiFi over the public library, the latter that most of them are already paying fo
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Two parallel roads, one private and well maintained that charges a toll, the other a free mess nobody wants to use.
Where? Pictures?
Government approved monopoly wires going into a factory, that is constantly running generators because the utility power quality sucks.
Same questions? And that shouldn't include co-generation where a byproduct of the factory's production happens to be most practically disposed of by running a generator.
People choosing to use Starbucks WiFi over the public library, the latter that most of them are already paying for.
Or more likely, because they want coffee and the library doesn't serve it.
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Two parallel roads, one private and well maintained that charges a toll, the other a free mess nobody wants to use.
Where? Pictures?
Government approved monopoly wires going into a factory, that is constantly running generators because the utility power quality sucks.
Same questions? And that shouldn't include co-generation where a byproduct of the factory's production happens to be most practically disposed of by running a generator.
People choosing to use Starbucks WiFi over the public library, the latter that most of them are already paying for.
Or more likely, because they want coffee and the library doesn't serve it.
Look up Dulles Greenway, Seriously, this cannot be that hard to find out by anybody.
Yea, bummer you can't even drink coffee in some libraries, much less buy it there. Before you suggest forcing SBX to cater at the library, take a look at a Barnes & Noble.
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I see WTOP says it's regulated, and people are up in arms about the cost with more and more avoiding it entirely.
You skipped question two. As for three, try borrowing a book from Barnes & Noble. But I will grant that their coffee is better than Starbucks. Too bad they closed the location nearby.
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Your notion that government has to push everybody around to get what you want is nonsense.
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What's nonsense is your bizarre belief that any entity could ever successfully negotiate 2 million rental agreements in order to build infrastructure.
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I see WTOP says it's regulated
Yea, just like everything else. Regulated does not mean owned by the government, like the Dulles Toll Road, it means government is sticking its nose in where it shouldn't.
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You seem to have ignored that it's outrageously expensive...
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If you don't find the sort of pants you want in the market, you can go start making your own and compete; if you don't like the railways, you can't start laying down tracks next to Amtrak's and Conrail's.
James J. Hill, creator of the Great Northern Railroad managed to span the continent without your precious eminent domain land grabs and special easements for tycoons. His transcontinental railroad is still running on the same routs, unlike that Lincoln version that was ripped up during WWII. Want to try again?
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That's easy to do when nobody lives there yet. The land was up for grabs and he grabbed it.
That doesn't work so well in a populated area.
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That's easy to do when nobody lives there yet. The land was up for grabs and he grabbed it.
That doesn't work so well in a populated area.
Your solution is theft and force. If you want to use someone's property, you should have to get their permission. If that includes a lease and payment, fine as long as it is voluntary. If it includes purchase outright, so be it, so long as it is a voluntary exchange. Initiating violence is not the answer, no matter how bad you want your fiber.
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Ok, what is your great solution other than only provide internet service to unpopulated areas? Don't even dare suggest individual negotiations. Just in my subdivision that would require locating about 175 owners (assuming only running lines through half of the yards) and hammering out a suitable agreement. That would include at least one absentee bank that can't be bothered to send someone to mow or clear the plants growing in the leaf compost on the roof.
I'll be over here not holding my breath.
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That's easy to do when nobody lives there yet. The land was up for grabs and he grabbed it.
That doesn't work so well in a populated area.
YOU are the one who brought up the railroads. Like many examples of that sort, it is a bad one. There are no good ones to support your point.
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I did no such thing, read the thread again.
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You might want to look at railroad land grants. When I worked at Burlington Northern (which the Great Northern merged into, IIRC), the real estate part of the company, from the old land grants, was making half the corporate profit.
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Huh? BN couldn't have been making that money on real estate without its predecessors collecting the land in the 1800s. Railroads did not cross the continent without government land grants.
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I have no problem giving awesome speed to their own subsidiary content providers.
You should. The effects are insidious and would eventually undermine the whole idea of free (as in speech) communication.
Nothing short of Title II Common Carrier status for ISPs is acceptable. That's the way it should have been from the beginning.
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being that the internet is dozens if not hundreds of companies,
how do you guarantee the same speed when the packets might have to pass through multiple backbone providers and the server hosting the content might not actually be able to serve everyone at those speeds
or the content owners may not have brought enough bandwidth to serve everyone at their top internet speed
ALL ISPs should be treated as "common carriers". (Score:1)
And force a separation of the contend side of their business from the communication side.
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No, that would be censorship. Anybody and everybody that wants to should be able to produce "content". We just have to stop protecting the monopolies.
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the TV and Internet services are two different services and there is no need to separate them
my netflix watch on demand is completely different from my MLB/NBA or my wife's reality show sit your ass down at the right time to watch the show
Victory..? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Victory..? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Victory..? (Score:5, Insightful)
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To play devil's advocate, when we find that our city streets are congested and fire trucks and ambulances are having trouble getting to their destinations, do we increase the width of the streets or do we implement a policy stating that normal traffic must give way to the emergency services? Admittedly, it's much harder to increase bandwidth in a city street scenario than in a network scenario, but our society has already established that traffic shaping is a good idea in at least one situation.
Running w
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The comparison doesn't work if the majority of the "roads" are unpaved and single-lane to begin with. Yes, you could argue that certain services should get priority, but the better solution in this case is just to improve the infrastructure. This is difficult to do with real roads, because so much of the surrounding land is already owned, but this sort of restriction does not hold true for the Internet; there is room to expand but no motivation to do so because it might cut into profits.
Once everybody has g
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You can recognize newer subdivisions around here by their wider roads. The requirement is specifically to better accommodate emergency vehicles. :-)
I'm not sure what would constitute an emergency vehicle on residential internet.
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i have no problem with ISP's charging netflix for peering or level 3/cogent to make them pay for more ports to deliver netflix traffic,
only if they charge the prevailing transit rates
i'm all for open internet, but the SENDER of the content has had to always be the one to pay for their delivery costs to deliver data to the user. that's the way its' been for the last 20 some years.
i use netflix, but i don't want my ISP bill going up to pay for the minority of people who binge watch shows all day and are nothi
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This is blatantly untrue. For the past 20 years ISPs have used the "Bill and Keep" model. The ISP or provider on each end bills their own customers and keep the money. Netflix pays their ISP, the end user pays their ISP, everyone is happy. That is until the end user's ISP decides they want to hide the cost of updating their infrastruct
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For things like MRI, people can use leased lines; which is a different ball of wax.
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So did we win? Or am I missing something?
You're missing something. He didn't say anything about limiting fast lane sales to Apple, Netflix, &c, and the line about cardio results is hogwash -- cardio results are a few bytes per second, they don't need a fast lane, they need high availability, which fast lanes do not provide (see HA versus HP clusters, for a similar case). He's trying to manipulate you.
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Nobody is sending an MRI to a residential cable customer. That's what this discussion is about, limiting customers abilities to access products that compete with the ISPs own, like video. Hospitals already buy dedicated private networks for their information systems, and I suspect that's driven more by billing than MRI images.
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We did not win. These stupid little rules of his are completely unenforceable. They've tried this before and it went to court. The judges said "Hey FCC, YOU'RE the one that gave up the ability to regulate these companies under common carrier rules. All you have to do to get it back is reclassify."
Any rule he proposes is just that. A Proposal, with zero teeth. None. Zilch. The FCC gave up the right to regulate broadband in 2005, and the FCC chairman of the time went on to become a lobbyist for cable compan
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(I don't mind my internet running a little slower so someone can get their MRI transmitted faster)
Thin.
End.
Of.
The.
Wedge.
Enlightened self-interest (Score:3)
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Sounds to me like someone is interested in preserving their job at the FCC rather than anything as altruistic or abstract as 'protecting the public's interests'.
does this detail really matter? Greed and survival instincts are no different than any other exploitable human attribute.
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Gad! It isn't physics (Score:1)
in the US the ISPs should operated just like the baby Bells did after the breakup of AT&T: All traffic, voice, modem, fax, teletype, ISDN, ALL Of It, was treated the same. You pays your fees you gets your line.
Anything else means the politicians and/or bureaucrats have been bought and paid for.
some "common carrier" rules...? (Score:1)
Not good enough. But I'm not expecting anything better until we stop reelecting the crooks that got us here.
Once there's a "fast lane", you know what happens. (Score:2)
Yellow Light (Score:2)
yeah, he dont want to look too fascist (Score:2)
just like ex Monsanto exec works for the FDA (sounds fascist to me)
it happens with big defense contractors that have a revolving door with the government (the US Govt would make Mussolini proud)
Two steps backwards, One Step forward (Score:2)
So we took two steps backwards when Wheeler opened the gates for ISPs to make a "fast lane" and now we're taking one step forward as Wheeler says that the fast lane will only be used in some cases. This isn't a victory - this is the ISPs "compromising" so they get some of what they want now and waiting to get the rest later. Eventually, if this is enacted, the "fast lane" cases will get more items added to them bit by bit until we're in full blown ISP-wet-dream-fast-lane mode.
NOT. GOOD. ENOUGH. (Score:5, Informative)
Tom Wheeler needs to STEP DOWN.
the Obama Administration needs to be held to its promise of ACTUAL Net Neutrality. [wh.gov]
this is not over yet, not by a long shot.
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Tom Wheeler will never have the public's interest in mind. Once a lobbyist for cable and wireless companies always their shill.
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First off, that petition is stupid. you don't put 3 things in one petition. No one will pay attention
Secondly, Tom WHeeler is the best person to get to those goals.
" headed by Chairman and former cable lobbyist Tom Wheeler"
logical fallacy.
"announced rules that will completely destroy Net Neutrality"
speculation
"Mr. Wheeler's proposed rules "
ask your self, who they are proposed to. Those are the people you need to contact. Wheeler can not to more or less then congress wants. Going after him just makes it easi
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stop blaming a president for what congress does.
Congress did nothing but authorize the FCC, and delegate authority for regulating interstate communications to the executive.
That would be Obama. He can have the FCC re-classify broadband as a common carrier at any time, but won't do it. He's doing what he's told, and pretending that it's somebody else's fault. It's a classic trait of everyone that suffers from NP disorder.
Watch your language (Score:5, Insightful)
including prioritization given by ISPs to their subsidiaries that make and stream content
Sigh. Comcast won't prioritize its subsidiary's traffic, it will de-prioritize its competitors traffic.
Please, just classify ISPs as a common carrier (like you should have done years ago) and be done with it.
his proposed rules mean shit all (Score:2, Informative)
They FCC used to classify the internet as a common carrier. They changed that in 2005 to an "information service", which they don't have rules to regulate. They already tried making up net neutrality rules, and a judge already smacked them down and told them they GAVE UP the ability to regulate broadband and that they'd need to reclassify to get it back. They can do this at any time.
Given that a court has already told them that their little rules don't apply, all these new proposals mean shit all. Any com
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"They FCC used to classify the internet as a common carrier. "
No they didn't.
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uh... yes they did. I got the year wrong. Apparently it was 2002. Here's a nice article to explain it all.
http://www.theverge.com/2014/1/15/5311948/net-neutrality-and-the-death-of-the-internet
Dupe (Score:1)
Update: 05/13 16:37 GMT by T : Oops -- I missed this earlier, substantially similar story.
You don't say...
Not good enough. (Score:1)
No fast lanes. Period.
You get what you pay for. That's it. Anything less and the FCC can screw off.
give elected officials a chance! (Score:1)
I didn't vote for anyone in the FCC.
Stop Parroting Cardiography (Score:4, Insightful)
some public-interest cases like a healthcare company sending electrocardiography results
This is a patently deceptive meme. It is intended to tug at your heart strings to sell the case, but it is not a good application of a fast lane. Cardio results do not need high performance lines, because they produce a tiny trickle of data. They need high availability, which a fast lane does not help. If Mr. Wheeler is really suggesting that paid prioiritization will render the standard lane so unusably clogged that a few bytes of cardio data won't fit over the pipe in a split second, then he is hoisting himself by his own petard.
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Also, most health care providers are already paying vast sums for VPN services, this stuff doesn't hit the public internet.
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Also, most health care providers are already paying vast sums for VPN services, this stuff doesn't hit the public internet.
Uh, the 'V' in VPN stands for virtual. It's not a real PN and very well could be sharing the same fiber and wire and routers as the public internet.
It isn't uncommon for VPN providers to give a guaranteed amount of bandwidth to a user on a router and to sell the surplus bandwidth for use by the public internet.
In this scenario the VPN user has a 'fast lane' up to the amount of bandwidth
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Oh it's definitely sharing the same fiber, dwdm, otn, sonet, packet, mpls, everything with our public IP traffic. BUT, they're paying a premium and getting QoS, CoS, guaranteed CIR, in some cases guaranteed latency. That's the point. Healthcare providers, and especially insurers, are already paying for Fast Lanes, so it's a terrible example of why ISPs should get to squeeze content providers but degrading their retail IP networks.
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And to top it off, there is already a service for high priority traffic. It's called: Guaranteed bandwidth and QoS.
So long as both ends agree on which packets get delivered first, this is already a widely deployed (and acceptable) practice. An internet "fast lane" is not a solution to the heart monitor "problem".
Just a foot in the door (Score:2)
Oops -- I missed this earlier story (Score:2)
>> Oops -- I missed this earlier, substantially similar story
At SlashDot, that's called "par for the course."
A Neglected Side To This Issue (Score:4, Insightful)
It seems to me that one of the biggest problems with the consolidation of ISPs with content providers is that they have a vested interest in keeping upload speeds low, so that their customers can't compete with them. I would go farther than some of those commenting on this and suggest that content providers should not be allowed to own/operate ISPs or own the "last mile."
Those who own "the last mile," as well as ISPs (they should be different entities as well) should all be classified as "common carriers." Further, "last mile" owners should be required to provide (at reasonable cost) access to any/all ISPs that want to provide service to end-users.
Again, upload speeds should not be throttled. Obviously, those who want higher upload (or download) speeds can certainly pay for that service. Service bundles (TV/Phone/Internet) provide little benefit to end-users and often give incumbent monopolies customer lock-in. Give us Glass-Steagall for the Internet (I'd like it back in the financial industry too, but that's a whole other level of rip-off).
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