Charter Hires Net Neutrality Activist To Make Policy 70
An anonymous reader writes: The Federal Communications Commission has been at loggerheads with many ISPs lately, after the agency pushed through net neutrality rules that have now gone into effect. The defeat of Comcast's attempted acquisition of Time Warner Cable was hailed by many net neutrality activists as a victory, but then came the news that Charter was looking to buy TWC instead — which brought the worries back. But now Charter has taken the unusual step of hiring one of those activists to help develop its policy: Marvin Ammori. He says, "Charter hired me—which, to be honest, took some humility on its part since I have helped lead public campaigns against cable companies like Charter—to advise it in crafting its commitment to network neutrality. After our negotiation, I can say Charter is offering the strongest network neutrality commitments ever offered—in any merger or, to my knowledge, in any nation. In fact, in the end, I personally wrote the commitments." Put briefly, Charter agreed to abide by the interconnection mandates and prohibition of paid prioritization — regardless of the outcome of pending litigation from the ISPs fighting it — for a minimum of three years. The company has also promised no data caps and no usage-based billing.
Well its simple (Score:3)
if they are the first out of the gate they will get the most customers if they actually follow through with their changes. They really have nothing to lose and everything to gain by giving the customer the features that are requested the most.
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if they are the first out of the gate they will get the most customers if they actually follow through with their changes. They really have nothing to lose and everything to gain by giving the customer the features that are requested the most.
If these guys really wanted more customers they wouldn't have quoted me a price of nearly $3000 to run cable less than 1 block to my house. (which would potentially get up to 5 of my neighbors as customers as well.)
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well lets see maybe if you could get all 5 to also commit (and maybe the next furthest N folks) then they might want to deal with you.
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Re:Well its simple (Score:4)
So they gave you a legitimate compromise of finding a *single* other person interested to make their groundbreaking worth it to them in case you cancelled your contract at the end and leaving them in the red... and you said no?
There's a person who is wrong here... but I don't think it's the person you think it is.
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You really blew it. You might be kicking yourself for a LONG time.
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Keep fighting with them. You will win.
They wanted to charge my parents to run to a pole half way up their driveway, about 500ft. Cable that was there at one time but got ripped down by a passing truck and never restored. I got on the phone with them and they agreed to run the cable at no cost.
You should tell them to run the damn cable and get minimum of 1 new customer, don't run it and have 0 chance of ever getting new customers.
On a side note, Charter net speeds, pings and overall quality for my have been
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Go phone up Shaw and see how much they want. $3000 is a bargain.
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50000000 ftw?
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who got the comment? I can't find it.
Re: Well its simple (Score:2)
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Its not just three years, Its three years regardless of the outcome of the ISP lawsuit over the FCC's move. That means if the lawsuit gets the rules tossed out next month, they are still going to give it a go for the three years. If the lawsuit fails, they should already be there and positioned to be compliant.
Alternately ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Alternate "tinfoil hat" explanation:
Once he's in house, sufficiently "re-educated" and compensated, and once the lawmakers have been paid off properly, then he will become a lobbyist to tell us in newspeak that net neutrality is slavery, and that corporations should be able to block competitors and promote their own services as innovation.
I hope this guy is honest and sticks to his guns. But my experience in the world suggests a much darker outcome.
I keep putting more layers, and the world keeps showing me I'm not paranoid enough.
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It wouldn't be the first time. Isn't one of the founders of Greenpeace now shilling for oil companies or something?
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It wouldn't be the first time. Isn't one of the founders of Greenpeace now shilling for oil companies or something?
If you're talking about Moore no. He's shilling pro-capitalism when greenpeace when communist, and dove onto the crazy train.
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Do they seriously need to hire someone to tell them how to abide by the basic rules of network neutrality? Is that concept so difficult to understand? All you have to do is drop all paid prioritization and make throttling (if any) load-based irrespective of packet content and sender/recipient. You know, the way the Internet was designed to work.
Re: Alternately ... (Score:2)
Yes, they do have to pay someone, because that's what companies do after all... They pay knowledgable people to do things for them. Is that really that hard to understand?
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This is the obvious outcome, tinfoil hat or not.
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Since when do corporations actually obey the law? (Score:3)
Or their own commitments? Charter's going to do whatever the fuck it wants to do.
What does it say when this is... (Score:5, Insightful)
"We promise if you consider letting this go through that we won't break the law for at least....um....yeah 3 years sounds good to us, what do you think?"
Are they fucking kidding?
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I'm guessing that they're going to try it by the rules for 3 years and see how it works. If, as I suspect, they make a killing they'll decide it was a good decision. If they don't make the money they'd like it'll be "we tried."
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I'm quite sure you can already get 1GB/s symmetrical for greater than $50/month. Quite a bit greater, in fact!
If you let me marry her... (Score:1, Insightful)
I promise not to beat her for 3 years....
I actually like Charter (Score:3, Interesting)
I know it goes totally again the slashdot manifesto to actually like a cable company, but in my area (West Michigan) Charter has been nothing but fantastic for over a decade now. They have been incredibly reliable, very responsive (are happy to bury new cables to your home if your old ones aren't up to the job, for example) to problems, offer an "internet only" package at a (small) discount, are at least 3x as fast as any other company in the area (Comcast and AT&T, both of which completely suck in this area). They have never blocked or throttled any traffic. Their representatives at the local office are even friendly and helpful. I can't wait until Charter finally takes over most of the Comcast network in my area, as many of my clients are on Comcast, which is around 25% the speed of Charter in my area (AT&T's top speed in my area is even worse). Crazy, but true.
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Just posted the same thing below for my area.
http://yro.slashdot.org/commen... [slashdot.org]
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When I lived in West Michigan, Charter was always the best provider I had access too, great customer service, pricing was fair, and my network was pretty rock solid.
Usual coportate reaction (Score:3)
When we attempt to impose rules on corporation, first they scream they will not be able to do business anymore and this will destroy whatever is at stake.
But in the end, while there is non zero profit to be made, corporation will cope with the new rules.
I can actually say this on behalf of Charter (Score:5, Interesting)
About 10 years ago their service was not very good where I am. About 5 years ago that started to change. 2 years ago they called me up and just said, hey, just FYI I know you bought your own modem but we're sending you a new one for free. We just increased everybody to 60mb service (also no extra charge) and the modem you have won't work at those speeds.
Charter + Cable Card + Tivo Roamio has turned into just about the best tv/internet experience I've had. I never thought I'd say that about a cable company, but at least in the Greenville, SC area Charter does a great job.
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I live in Spartanburg county, and I believe I can confirm this post. Charter used to be a little touch and go, and since the only other option was DSL (and not very good at that), we had to put up with it. It was generally always enough to play Starcraft or Diablo 2 with, so no biggie. We moved to the new house nearly 9 years ago, and we had a series of issues that required visits and working on the cable lines, but since the last time they were out here, it's been quite consistent. Not totally sure how the
THREE YEARS??? (Score:1)
3 years? (Score:3)
You had me until 3 years (Score:5, Insightful)
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This is a temp job.... writing the documents about Charter's "net neutrality" system only has to be done once.
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This.
It should be 5 years minimum.
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Why five? That is just another arbitrary number pulled from nowhere.
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Because they probably wouldn't agree to 10 or 20 years no company likes permanent agreements.
I know I wouldn't agree to a 10 year agreement with my isp even if they offered to double my bandwidth and charge me half as much.
one year yes maybe even two (and only with SLA) but 10 years no.
They want the option to screw us just as much as we want the option to switch to another provider.
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I would not even agree to a single year contract with my ISP. Still 5 years seems a strange complaint over 3 years. It just seems odd.
The Net Neutrality Dilema (Score:2)
When content providers have a large amount of data to repeat to customers, they move servers to the ISPs data center and we support them getting the content to us faster.... but when websites get locked out, they claim it's a net neutrality problem and we support that.
Uhm, pick a side!
many (Score:2)
real protests have 50000000 members
You had me from hello (Score:1)
Charter that's my ISP for years now (Score:2)
Working on blocking a few Microsoft sites was a mistake on my part, as they are used to retrieve Certificates (Certs) so had to enable them again, But using Robtex.com to view the addresses, there are Edge servers between them and me; and I imagine all. Edge servers are exempt and can throttling traffic to maintain a server or balance the load, as per the Net Neutrality rules.
Don't Get Excited... (Score:1)