Cable Companies Urge Judges To Kill 'Net Neutrality' Rules 170
An anonymous reader quotes Reuters:
Trade associations representing wireless, cable and broadband operators on Friday urged the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to reverse...the Federal Communications Commission's so-called net neutrality rules, put in place last year to make internet service providers treat all internet traffic equally...
The cable groups said the court should correct "serious errors" in a decision "that radically reshapes federal law governing a massive sector of the economy, which flourished due to hundreds of billions of dollars of investment made in reliance on the policy the order throws overboard".. In its filing on Friday, the CTIA said it was illegal to subject broadband internet access to "public-utility style, common carrier regulation" and illegal to impose "common-carrier status on mobile broadband."
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said he wasn't surprised to see "the big dogs" challenging net neutrality.
Compare cable TV providers at Wirefly.
The cable groups said the court should correct "serious errors" in a decision "that radically reshapes federal law governing a massive sector of the economy, which flourished due to hundreds of billions of dollars of investment made in reliance on the policy the order throws overboard".. In its filing on Friday, the CTIA said it was illegal to subject broadband internet access to "public-utility style, common carrier regulation" and illegal to impose "common-carrier status on mobile broadband."
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said he wasn't surprised to see "the big dogs" challenging net neutrality.
Compare cable TV providers at Wirefly.
They should be fined for acting like babies (Score:1)
If I was a judge and someone was trying to change a law that prevents extortion and other organized crime style corruption, I'd fine them and kick them out of the courtroom. But maybe this judge takes bribes.
Re:They should be fined for acting like babies (Score:4, Informative)
On the other hand, one would like elected officials to pass a law changing the status of such a massive thing, and not just do something Congress did not envision with that law. This is a massive sector for unelected officials to rewrite.
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This is a massive sector for unelected officials to rewrite.
It needs to be rewritten. It's past time to turn the internet (into a dumb pipe) and even cellular service into a public utility, just like the land line. If Congress won't do it, the courts must. And if they don't, we need to put the initiative on the ballot. We endure lousy service only because of public apathy.
Re:They should be fined for acting like babies (Score:4, Insightful)
If Congress won't do it, the courts must.
The courts are not supposed to be in the business of writing law. That means if Congress won't do it, the courts have even less business doing it.
And if they don't, we need to put the initiative on the ballot.
You wish for a patchwork of internet regulation on a state-by-state basis? What a minefield that would be.
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If Congress won't do it, the courts must.
The courts are not supposed to be in the business of writing law. That means if Congress won't do it, the courts have even less business doing it.
Playing semantics is pointless. By interpreting the law, the courts essentially write it. It's simply a different process, and they don't write new, original laws, only taking in ones that already exist.
And if they don't, we need to put the initiative on the ballot.
You wish for a patchwork of internet regulation on a state-by-state basis? What a minefield that would be.
Where does he say that it should be a on state-by-state basis?
Re:They should be fined for acting like babies (Score:4)
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Or perhaps it's just a figure of speech meaning "make enough noise to get the federal legislature to do something about it" ?
No. There is no federal initiative process, and NO BALLOT TO PUT IT ON. Here in the USA we do not have a true national election. The highest level election (and thus "ballot") is the state level. All the gum flapping you read in your papers about the "winner" of the "popular vote" for President (the only national elected office now that Pres and VP are combined) is just gum flapping. There are state elections which result state winners, and a process to select the final winner from that. "Adding up all the
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If Congress won't do it, the courts must.
The courts are not supposed to be in the business of writing law. That means if Congress won't do it, the courts have even less business doing it.
And if they don't, we need to put the initiative on the ballot.
You wish for a patchwork of internet regulation on a state-by-state basis? What a minefield that would be.
If Congress won't do it, the courts must.
The courts are not supposed to be in the business of writing law. That means if Congress won't do it, the courts have even less business doing it.
And if they don't, we need to put the initiative on the ballot.
You wish for a patchwork of internet regulation on a state-by-state basis? What a minefield that would be.
I dont mind if the government does allow the law to be struck down but only if and only if the government puts in an alternative IP Highway. The government provides interstate transportation, it should provide communication transportation.
My province, (Quebec) nationalized the distribution and generation of electricity. It was done so that remote areas could get electricity at the same cost as city dwellers. Today, we have one of the cheapest electricity rates in North America. I wish they would do the sam
Re:They should be fined for acting like babies (Score:5, Informative)
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We need to demand that any judge who gives the cable companies more than the time of day should be impeached. Like the Rocky Horror Picture Show, democracy requires audience participation to be effective.
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We need to demand that any judge who gives the cable companies more than the time of day should be impeached.
"I'm sorry, cable company, but we cannot consider your legal rights in any matter at all, because fustakrakich has ruled that if we do more than 'give you the time of day' we shall be impeached. You have no legal rights and no defense against any lawsuits anyone files against you for any reason."
There is no end to your hatred of the cable companies and no end to the means you will go to to destroy them, is there?
Like the Rocky Horror Picture Show, democracy requires audience participation to be effective.
You know those people who make up cable companies are part of the democracy that gets to partic
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There is no end to your hatred of the cable companies and no end to the means you will go to to destroy them, is there?
Wrong again. I want to make them have to compete, and to be declared a public utility. Nothing about destruction there. Their lawsuits are clearly frivolous, but their money and the purchase of legislation always buys them time.
You know those people who make up cable companies are part of the democracy that gets to participate, don't you?
They are purchasing and receiving special privileges,
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Having lived through and remember the era of phone company monopoly that was destroyed by the courts in the early 80's I vastly prefer not to suffer under that same heal for any length of time. The Judges decision is timely, or would you prefer history repeat itself first?
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I think maybe we should do the opposite: we should give them exactly what they're asking for. We should exempt them from Common Carrier status, and let them regulate traffic on their network however they see fit.
However, by not being common carriers and having that status and protection, they become fully liable for all traffic on their network. So if any crimes at all are committed using their network, they are fully liable, including criminally. If someone gets hacked and it went over a company's wires
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Having lived through and remember the era of phone company monopoly
Me too... That's why I don't want the judges to give in to these companies' frivolities. What makes internet "duopolies" any better? Common carrier, public utility, and competition are all steps in the right direction. What have I posted to contradict that?
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Why is it "ludicrous"? Do you have any real reasoning as to why it wouldn't work? The whole point of Common Carrier status is that it's a bargain: the telecom company gets immunity for information passing over its network in exchange for not interfering with that information. It was devised back in the telephone days, so that the telephone company didn't have legal liability for their communications system being used to abet crimes, in exchange for them not interfering with communications, and treating a
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There is no end to your hatred of the cable companies and no end to the means you will go to to destroy them, is there?
I'm not American so don't have to deal with them but from the impression I get isn't that what they do to you?
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The current FCC has no actual power (balls).
Re: They should be fined for acting like babies (Score:2)
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I don't care how it is done.
Do you care what the Constitution says, or is it just toilet paper to you?
The ends justify the means.
Right.
Then make it federal.
There is no federal initiative process, and no support in the Constitution to create one. That means any "initiatives" have to be at the state level.
Hell, the president should sign an executive order to make it happen.
We've had too much "rule by fiat" already.
Or you can spend the rest of your lives discussing it and get nothing done while prices reach for the sky.
Prices have nothing to do with net neutrality, and where does it say anywhere that the Supreme Court has the authority to set internet rates?
Either you want proper internet service, or you don't.
I have proper internet service.
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Prices have nothing to do with net neutrality,
Prices have everything to do with it. Cable Co. want rid of it so they can apply premiums, multiple rates and generally charge you more for everything. Everyone else wants it so they can pay for the internet and get the internet.
I have proper internet service.
You won't if net neutrality is gone, unless you want to get your wallet out again that is.
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The Constitution is just bad toilet paper if it is a hindrance to its purpose, which is in service to the citizenry.
The purpose of the Constitution is not to give everyone their little heart's desire. It's to put a limit on the federal government. It is not the purpose of the federal government to give everyone their little heart's desire, either. "My internet service isn't good enough" isn't a problem that the US government and the Constitution were created to solve.
Especially applicable in this case, where the means are not necessarily repugnant,
Yes, the means are repugnant. When a court steps in to start legislating it is repugnant. When it steps in to set internet service rates is would be especia
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>When a court steps in to start legislating it is repugnant
That is literally what the ENTIRETY of all common law consists off - and most hardcore libertarian types consider common law the ONLY justifiable type.
Of course they are insane, and we do need governmental law as well - but to suggest that judges legislating is some massively anti-liberty idea or repugnant to the separation of powers is grossly ignorant. Legislating is, in fact, a time-honored and fundamental part of being a judge - seperation of
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Executive orders are when presidents (heads of the executive branch) give orders to federal agents under their command. The internet is regulated by the FCC -- an independent executive organization outside of the president's chain of command. A president giving an order to any person or agency not under their command would be null and void. Obama could issue an executive order for all ice cream shops to give out free ice cream on Thursdays, and it would be null and void. It's nonsensical to give an or
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This is a massive sector for unelected officials to rewrite.
It needs to be rewritten. It's past time to turn the internet (into a dumb pipe) and even cellular service into a public utility, just like the land line. If Congress won't do it, the courts must. And if they don't, we need to put the initiative on the ballot. We endure lousy service only because of public apathy.
I flew in the era when airlines were regulated. Fares, routes, it was all controlled by the federal government, and guess what? It cost a fortune to fly anywhere. Sure, it was great that my employer-paid seat was on a half-populated plane where I could stretch out on the seats, but if I were going somewhere on my own dime, I'd either be driving or Greyhounding it, because I couldn't afford the 'luxury' of flying. Those were also the days pre-Carterfone decision where it was illegal to attach your own device
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It cost a fortune to fly anywhere.
At least you knew when you purchased the ticket what the price was. Now there are so many hidden fees that most people have no idea how much a trip is actually going to cost. And some of the pricing is still designed to rip people off, a trip from California to Osaka Japan costs LESS then a trip to Houston Texas. And I remember reading on Slashdot about some trick where you could buy a ticket to a destination with a layover where you actually wanted to go and then not bother to re-board the plane and it wou
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Congress created laws for this already, and the President issued an executive order creating the FCC to enact those laws. By not acting, Congress is stating their position on the matter: the FCC was created to decide how this works, and Congress sees no need to intervene.
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There is no "unless". If Congress looks at the FCC, determines what they're doing is in line with the best judgment of the FCC given their specialized expertise and their mission, and takes no action, then Congress has determined that the FCC is doing what the FCC is supposed to do. They don't need to pass a new law stating that the FCC's current actions are all fine by Congress and require no remediation at this time.
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Re: They should be fined for acting like babies (Score:2)
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No, the FCC was right before 2002 and wrong now.
Before 2002, the carriers had to make TELECOM available, but the Internet was unregulated. Telecom is raw bit transmission, and The Internet runs on top of it, as its payload. In 2002 the FCC said that fiber was exempt, and in 2005 DSL was (cable always was), so there was nothing left for competitive ISPs. So the telcos called themselves ISPs.
The FCC should have regulated telecom again, so ISPs could compete over telco wires. But they didn't. The new rules ser
Re:They should be fined for acting like babies (Score:4, Informative)
You are a fucked-up retard. Stop with the "designed by the military" shit. Arpanet was designed by universities and private companies. The funding and direction came from DARPA, but that's it. It was a way to share computing resources between institutions. They never envisioned home Internet connections, never mind cellular phones and IoT.
comcast wants you to buy HBO with cable tv and (Score:3)
comcast wants you to buy HBO with cable tv and not just HSI + HBO GO.
Re:comcast wants you to buy HBO with cable tv and (Score:5, Insightful)
Look no further than Canada to see what a lack of net neutrality looks like
1) Expensive (minimum $85 to get ANY internet service)
2) Unbundled packages save you nothing
3) To get things like HBO, you have to spend over $100 in package bundles
4) Each carrier has their own garbage-tier VOD service that only has the last 1 or 2 episodes, and sometimes not even that if it's a childrens show. This is because they came with their own Netflix-clones for watching entire seasons of the exact same VOD material.
5) And if you switch carriers, you have to pay for data on top of the subscription cost to use those netflix-clones.
Basically the Canadian carriers are trying to "kill netflix" by using the bandwidth caps against it's users and then go "but you can use Shomi if you use Rogers/Shaw, or Crave if you use Bell/Telus for only another $10 per month" when you can pay an extra $15 and just get the unmetered package.
The requirement, should be: The Cable, Telephone, and Fiber networks shall only be a "dumb pipe", any content can go over it. The congestion controls should be set at the switching points, not the ISP. If a neighborhood is "saturated" then that neighborhood is checked for who is using a disproportionate amount of bandwidth, sent a "speeding ticket" that tells them they will be downgraded to 8Mbits until they explain how they are using that bandwidth.
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Look no further than Canada to see what a lack of net neutrality looks like 1) Expensive (minimum $85 to get ANY internet service)
Has nothing to do with net neutrality.
2) Unbundled packages save you nothing
Also not net neutrality.
3) To get things like HBO, you have to spend over $100 in package bundles
You are batting 0.000 for net neutrality issues so far.
4) Each carrier has their own garbage-tier VOD service
Comcast OnDemand isn't an internet service, it's a cable TV service. Not net neutrality.
5) And if you switch carriers, you have to pay for data on top of the subscription cost to use those netflix-clones.
Uhh, what? You have to pay for data to get data? I'm at a loss what you're talking about here.
The requirement, should be: The Cable, Telephone, and Fiber networks shall only be a "dumb pipe", any content can go over it.
How is paying Rogers for Shomi different than paying Netflix for Netflix, and what does it have to do with "any content can go over it?"
The congestion controls should be set at the switching points, not the ISP.
Uhhh, so an ISP cannot ever allow any congestion within their own switching n
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VOD is actually a sticking point with ISPs and the FCC.
Modern cable systems are digital, and they push content... so a video on demand service from a cable service is extremely similar to any other video on demand service -- like Hulu, Netflix, or Amazon. The FCC has warned ISPs not to degrade the quality of other VOD services to favor their own, but they can provide their own for free or for a fee to compete with others.
The sticking point is net metering -- should cable companies be allowed to exclude the
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so a video on demand service from a cable service is extremely similar to any other video on demand service -- like Hulu, Netflix, or Amazon.
Except Comcast's isn't. It is delivered like a regular cable channel, encrypted, and the STB is instructed to tune to that channel. It's isn't a dedicated data stream. In fact, before they started encrypting those feeds, it was quite fun to use a digital tuner to scan for any OnDemand and watch along with your neighbors. It was great. They would skip the ads for you, and rewind to rewatch the interesting bits.
Different delivery system, different part of the available bandwidth.
Some say it should be excluded because it is on the cable company's network and they don't have to pay a fee to pull it over an internet connection.
1. For Comcast, it isn't data
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Bandwidth isn't water, its not going to run out and they can simply add capacity.
Water falls from the sky and is free, yet they meter for that. But you think bandwidth with actual capacity costs is free?
If they need to spend $10k to upgrade a link, should they have the cost spread among the 1GB per month users, or the 1TB per month users? The 1TB users, like you, want it split evenly by connection, when the benefit is almost exclusively for you. That's why the metering and caps exist.
Selfish assholes like you want free bandwidth, at the expense of others.
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The problem is two-fold: 1) carriers have been selling oversubscribed bandwidth and then complaining when people hit the actual limits, and 2) the public wants everybody else to pay to their incessant over-consumption of bandwidth. If carriers want to sell an unlimited bandwidth package then they should charge enough to cover the costs. And if people want the unlimited bandwidth package they should pay for it.
Re: comcast wants you to buy HBO with cable tv an (Score:1)
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That's bits not bandwidth
You'll have to define "bandwidth" for us. Your use seems to not agree with any dictionary I could find.
I haven't seen any other limiations on our downstream capacity in our contract,
Then you haven't found the "best effort" clause. It's in every residential contract, and many business ones, even "dedicated Internet" contracts.
You'll get your 25 Mbps between you and the DSLAM (or other network point), and no guarantees after. That's 25 Mbps of bandwidth (or bits, or howe
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Water is free.
Treated water is not.
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Untreated water is not necessarily free in quantity in a certain areas. Many places have adequate water for the taking, and many don't. California was having a serious drought for a while, and if there had been an unlimited source of free water there would have been no problem.
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they meter for the water that's been pulled from the river/reservoir, filtered, disinfected, and delivered to your house.
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Sure, water falls from the sky and if you want to drill a well, install a pump, and connect it to your house, you are free to do that. If you want it cleaned/filtered, the water company is happy to provide that and will charge you based on the size pipe running from your meter.
Not true. Most places will not allow you to just drill a well; any municipality will not. If everyone in a city drilled a well, it'd be a disaster; aquifers would be depleted or worse. Only rural dwellers are allowed to do this bec
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I use about a terabyte a month all of it on legal content. I'm either streaming video or downloading something from steam.
How may people do you have in your house? I have 4 that pretty much do nothing but sit on the internet when they aren't at work/school. I use about 350GB consistently month to month
Are you deleting your steam games and re-downloading every time you want to play them? I just can't fathom how a residential customer downloads 1TB/month consistently with just Netflix and Steam.
News at 11: (Score:4, Insightful)
News at 11: Liars lie.
Common Carrier (Score:5, Insightful)
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It would serve them right if the court just turned around and declared that cable and internet service providers are all in the category of "common carriers" and should be regulated and controlled as such. Bazinga.
Cable television certainly isn't a common carrier. Not even close. It is a video distribution system. One way.
Re: Common Carrier (Score:2)
Their video distribution service may be one way, but the ISP side of their house certainly isn't.
It's also not a separate company from the one who provides you your internet.
Thus, unless they spin the business off into it's own subsidiary, they would find themselves attached at the hip to the regulated side of the business.
Something they wouldn't care much for.
However, breaking off has its own issues as well. Like not getting a free ride across those Comcast owned data pipes.
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Common carrier has nothing to do with whether something is unidirectional, bidirectional, or omnidirectional.
Any service that allows anyone to pay a fee to have their goods &/or services picked up from one location and delivered to another is a common carrier. Airlines, telephone companies, electric companies, freight and railway companies, and internet service providers are all common carriers... because they "carry" a thing from A to B for a fee -- generally from any random member of the public.
T
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You are correct that Cable TV is not a common carrier... mostly. The FCC does require cable TV providers to carry broadcast TV stations within their respective areas (with some restrictions)
When I say "common carrier" in this context, I mean "should be treated under the law as a common carrier". And that "some restrictions" is a pretty big one. They aren't required to carry broadcast stations unless the station demands it. Most stations have found out it is financially better for them to demand payment for carriage instead of using must-carry. I'm sure there are some small independents that still demand must-carry, but the major broadcasters don't.
The key being they don't just broadcast whatever any random person wants for fee. They could, but it'd be a nightmare for scheduling, payment, censorship, etc.
Many cable systems have what's called PEG -- p
Throttling! (Score:1)
Throttling baby!
I don't mind it, I'll throttle my bills too.
From month to month I'll change my service tier, fry "your" modem, and pay the bill in anywhere from 0.05 to 0.25 increments, by cheque, by mail.
I'll complain that the internet is slow on X networks, and I'll hapilly post my speed test results. Good luck maintaining your "fastest in X" category.
For heavy downloading, that is where the Microsoft store, and apple store come in. I'll hapilly use your bandwidth, sure, I'll purchase a 20.00 mouse, and t
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Really? Arguing against Common Carrier? (Score:5, Interesting)
Never mind that nothing fits the definition of "common carrier" better than a service which sends packets over the inter-tubes. If the Cable Co's want to argue in court that they aren't common carriers, that is terribly dangerous for them: it sets a precedent that means that they are not afforded the protections given common carriers under the law, most important immunity from prosecution for transmission of illegal content.
Careful what you wish for, Comcast.
Re:Really? Arguing against Common Carrier? (Score:5, Interesting)
One of the reasons they don't want to be a public utility is that they want those censorship powers. If they had their way, all you would get is Facebook and Amazon.
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One of the reasons they don't want to be a public utility is that they want those censorship powers. If they had their way, all you would get is Facebook and Amazon.
Uh, they are a US capitalist company. Therefore, all they "want" is to secure revenue. If they had their way, you would get billed separately for your Facebook and Amazon "channels".
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Are you saying they didn't receive protection for transmission of illegal content until they were classified as CC this year? Something doesn't sound right with your argument.
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Until recently, we might not have had an official explanation for why ISPs don't have strict control over content flowing across their pipes, and so handwaved liability based on common sense. Now, with rules and definitions in place, we have decided that an entity which asserts that it has control over what type of content it delivers must also have *responsibility* for that content.
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So child pornography and its production shouldn't be criminalized behaviors? Look, I'm explicitly not a family-values politician, and even I think that's loony.
Insulting the judge's intelligence (Score:5, Insightful)
"billions of dollars of investment"
If they spent this much money without taking into account that this legislation could come down the pike they'd be amateurs.
Of course this is just a smokescreen, they did the math up front. This is still profitable, just not as much as it could be.
Re:Insulting the judge's intelligence (Score:5, Informative)
Those are the billions of TAX PAYER dollars they were given to build out the infrastructure, but they leave out that little detail.
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Good point.
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We have no appreciable competition with other developed countries for overall speed/price parity.
We don't even have local competition within a municipality, often it's the choice between cable and DSL... Two technologies that, while similar, are not real competition with one another. If anything, DSL's slower overall speed is incentive for cable to slow the F down and match price.
Over the past 15 years that I recall, speeds have gone from 5
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http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pu... [pbs.org]
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Right--the cable ISP business is profitable already, to the tune of an ~90% profit margin. What they're really bitching about here is being blocked from attempting to double-dip and charge two parties for the same bandwidth instead of the current total of one.
Well no kidding (Score:5, Insightful)
Why work to earn loyal customers when you can just tip the scales against your competition?
In addition (Score:2)
They also asked the Judge for an emergency injunction to require their customers to submit to further sodomy,
Give the carriers a choice (Score:3)
Tell them, you have two choices:
1. You accept common carrier status, net neutrality, and you are not held liable for content you carry.
2. You are not a common carrier, you can do what you want with traffic, but you take full responsibility for all illegal net traffic.
Choose wisely.
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I hope you realize that they don't have to inspect the content to be able to prioritize services which need higher QoS and lower latency. A Skype call that
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You are a fucking idiot. I don't say that lightly, but it's necessary.
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If you want to hide what kind of traffic you're sending so no QoS can be applied in transit, fine. Accept the congestion that undifferentiated traffic can be subject to.
As for the yammering about how these awful monopolies ... stop. There is no monopoly for ISP service. None.
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Trolling for the cable companies gets you no where.
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I guess you are not aware of Franchise agreements
Yes, I am very familiar with franchise agreements, because I have been on the local cable regulatory commission in two of the localities I've lived in. I've read those franchises, and the franchises of many other municipalities. I've asked multiple time for anyone to point me to an exclusive franchise and nobody has yet been able to show me one. There is a reason for that.
I guess you are not aware that by federal law franchise agreements are NOT ALLOWED to be exclusive. Some of them were, but the law has p
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As for the yammering about how these awful monopolies ... stop. There is no monopoly for ISP service. None.
What are you smoking? In most areas there is exactly one choice for internet service. Usually the local cable company. A business with a history of some of the shittiest customer service in existence. In other places the only choice is DSL from the local phone company. The world champions in shitty customer service.
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QoS is tedious and nearly impossible to set up and maintain properly and fairly. The easiest and most cost-beneficial way to use it is to favor content and services the ISP/Cable provider offers -- to the detriment of other providers. Also, QoS is basically useless for prioritizing anything over an encrypted VPN... and it's highly dependent on applications being fair and sticking to RFCs. All one has to do is write a program to send their data with a different packet header that lies and says the data
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A Skype call that talks about subversive overthrow of the US Government will look no different than a Skype call talking about Aunt Martha's cookie recipe, yet the latter is clearly a violation of several federal laws of patent and DMCA.
I hear Aunt Martha is on the FBI's top wanted list. She's pretty dangerous. We need to keep a close eye on her.
If they win... (Score:1)
... the internet will be divided into channels. And I'll bet that their Basic Package won't include all of the sites you have access to now.
USA internet access is too expensive to be honest. (Score:2)
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What percentage of your income do you pay in taxes?
Re:USA internet access is too expensive to be hone (Score:5, Insightful)
If you are trying to point out that his taxes subsidize the cable companies there, let me be the bearer of bad news - so do ours (in America). We just don't get to see the benefit.
Privatize profits, socialize losses and all that.
Re: USA internet access is too expensive to be hon (Score:2)
Yes. Fascism is a terrible thing.
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My brother-in-law lives in the usa (Seattle) he pays $80 (iirc) monthly for his internet, he said it was the cheapest. I live in france, for €32, I have a 22Mb/1.4MB VDSL connection along with a €0 euro mobile plan including 2h voice, and unlimited sms per month, and another 17€ with 50GB 4G plan with unlimited voice and sms (along with free roaming up to 3GB per year in a lot of countries including uk, germany, italy and spain). So I don't know what turned bad in usa, but it can't be that pricey.
Pricing for these kinds of services has been comparatively expensive for a very long time now. This is hardly new, and doesn't really depend on the carrier de jour.
Re: (Score:2)
I pay $80 for 172Mb down and 10Mb up. My mobile phone includes unlimited voice, text messaging, media SMS, and low-speed Internet, along with a few GB of high-speed Internet, but that costs $60 (I could get cheaper).
Your GDP-per-capita is as shitty as the UK's. Get ~12% more productive over there to catch up to the U.S. For the price I pay for Internet, I could buy 77Mb down and 4.5Mb up in France.
Even lagging as Europe is now, it won't be long before they catch up. What's holding Europe back relat
Not a Dingo (Score:2)
Ah Yes (Score:2)
"that radically reshapes federal law governing a massive sector of the economy, which flourished due to hundreds of billions of dollars of investment made in reliance on the policy the order throws overboard"
Love the subtle implied extortion. Either drop the lawsuit or we'll pull funding. It's a bluff. If they don't continue to build out we'll see fiber deployments continue to eat away at their subscriber base until widespread 5G deployments (years if not decades away) arrive.
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It was after the FCC decision that the phone company came through and tried selling us 40-1Kmb/s connections. (They had very little sales resistance here.)
In other news (Score:2)
Serial killers urge judges to stop convicting homicide cases.
Dinosaurs (Score:2)
The problem is AT&T and Comcast are whiny babies. They are dinosaur companies that are still trying to run their mega corporations as if we were still back in the days of Ma Bell and the Cable barons. Welcome to Capitalism friends! The same system that let you thrive when you actually were innovative and competitive is now urging you to evolve to continue to be competitive in the face of new and better services like Google Fiber, Verizon FIOS, Netflix, Hulu, Playstation Vue and you guys can't step up
Re:Kill Violently Imposed Monopolies (Score:4, Insightful)
A video byte is a video byte -- except when it isn't and it gets a free pass.
This is an attempt to stop them from acting like a gateway charging access. It isn't the difference between gramma'e email and Netflix. It is Netflix and some cable company's new video service.
Do you like the cable company selling you a service at a speed, then demanding, secretly, a cut of what you pay Netflix, or the cable company will crappify your Netflix video -- making a lie out of what they promised you for the cable service?
Re: Kill Violently Imposed Monopolies (Score:1)
Thank you for mentioning that. As an ISP owner who competes with cable, dsl, satellite and cell, my biggest obstacle is government regulations. The incumbents get exclusive rights to the resources, so it is almost impossible to compete against them.
Re: (Score:2)
We spent a trillion dollars on infrastructure in 2009. Shut your stupid face.