FCC Votes To Lift Net Neutrality Transparency Rules For Smaller Internet Providers (theverge.com) 115
The Federal Communications Commission today voted to lift transparency requirements for smaller internet providers. According to The Verge, "Internet providers with fewer than 250,000 subscribers will not be required to disclose information on network performance, fees, and data caps, thanks to this rule change. The commission had initially exempted internet providers with fewer than 100,000 subscribers with the intention of revisiting the issue later to determine whether a higher or lower figure was appropriate." From the report: The rule passed in a 2-1 vote, with Republicans saying the reporting requirements unfairly burdened smaller ISPs with additional work. Only Democratic commissioner Mignon Clyburn opposed. Clyburn argued that the disclosures were an important consumer protection that was far from overbearing on businesses, particularly ones this large. Clyburn also argued that the rule would allow larger internet providers to avoid disclosing information by simply breaking their service areas up into different subsidiaries. Republican commissioner Michael O'Rielly voted in favor of the change, saying he actually would have preferred the subscriber exemption to be even higher. And commission chairman Ajit Pai said the rules were necessary to protect "mom and pop internet service providers" from "burdensome requirements [...] that impose serious and unnecessary costs."
Wow, just wow. (Score:5, Insightful)
So apparently an ISP being able to tell people up front what their fees and charges will be is a
I guess this explains why big ISPs like Comcast and such manage to fuck up billing people on a regular basis. It's just too goddamn hard for companies to know what they charge for their services.
Re:Wow, just wow. (Score:5, Funny)
Well, you know only the BIG ISPs are able to afford things like computers, which can automatically calculate things like fees and bandwidth usage.
It's these poor "Mom and Pop" providers that are still keeping all their records on paper, and have to manually copy every packet from one internet tube to the next. It's REALLY exhausting. Can you imagine if they had to add up all the numbers and write a report for each and every subscriber every month? That would truly be burdensome. Someone needs to help these poor overworked people.
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this so contradicts the massive data retention and warrantless access that the government wants for themselves though.
you don't have to tell your customers anything, but you will still have to tell *us* **everything** whenever we come knocking.
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Wow. Lots of armchair quarterbacks who have no real concept of what it is to run an ISP from a business (and quite a few comments have no idea on the technical side either.)
I used to be involved in a smaller ISP. Costs are already working against them when competing against larger providers due to the peering arrangements, etc...
Just to list a few things as to why this is a "good" thing, as otherwise it just hastens the demise of the small ISP:
#1 Enterprise level billing systems for internet providers cost
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#3 Smaller ISP's are unlikely to have peering points at places like MAE East, etc and far more likely to have to purchase their bandwidth from a larger backbone provider. This means that the "cost" for bandwidth is far, far more for a local ISP. It also means they have to oversubscribe more than a larger provider to pay the bills. EVERYONE oversubscribes bandwidth sold vs. what they have, it is just different levels.The economics don't work for smaller internet providers in reselling bandwidth if the oversubscribing rate isn't above a certain percentage.
Many small ISPs have access to local exchanges/hotels. Core bandwidth is not likely to be a limiting factor these days.. lack of small ISP investment in bandwidth management in core speaks for itself.
When you get shitty performance from your local WISP it isn't core network that is oversubscribed. It's typically last mile RF link. Ditto for cable plant of small Cable based providers.
Advancements in queue for Wireless technology are nothing short of amazing.. ditto on next gen PON. Personally I see a br
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So what you are saying is that smaller ISPs need to be able to lie about the quality of their services to compete, hmm, OK :| (FU).
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#1 Enterprise level billing systems for internet providers cost a lot of money. The more regulations/rules/requirements the system has, the (likely) more expensive it will need to be. In my past experience we "rolled our own", but, this isn't feasible for most in the arena for many reasons and in hindsight it was a bad idea for liability reasons.
Why would a small business need enterprise level software?
There are a few providers that handle this for reasonable fees. We used Platapus for the small ISP I worked for.
http://www.ispbilling.com/ [ispbilling.com]
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So you're saying that small ISPs don't have the resources to do things like know what their own damned pricing structure is? They don't have the ability to know/remember what data caps they themselves put in place?
Sorry but this is all just anti-consumer BS wrapped up in a "think of the little guys!" Given Trump's recent appointments, its also likely as an intentional step down the slippery slope with the full intention of seeing the big providers cry foul next year and having the requirements dropped com
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So you're saying that small ISPs don't have the resources to do things like know what their own damned pricing structure is?
No, he absolutely never said that. Common sense tells us that they do, and obviously their customers will know. So no need for regulation that requires it and comes with other requirements such as performance which the ISP may not take time to measure or guarantee.
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Thanks for the interesting perspective, but I just don't agree.
#1 Common sense would dictate that they should at least be able to report what they *are* doing or not doing. I don't believe the requirement is to report information that they don't already have and would require an expensive enterprise level system to obtain.
#2 This is kind of irrelevant. Most people would rather drive a car that can go 300 mph even though they'd realistically never use that. That doesn't mean Honda should be allowed to f
The (400 page) requirements you can read. $3.25 (Score:3, Interesting)
I just spent two days filling out forms and schedules for the IRS, in order to report the fact that I owe them $3.25. All those forms might make sense for a big company; it's asinine that I had to do all that to calculate $3.25 in federal unemployment tax because I earned $530 from a side business last year. My total tax forms for that $530 business are probably 40 pages of tax forms per year. I fully support distinguishing between a company like Verizon vs Ray Morris Inc when it comes to reporting requir
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I dare you to even try to READ the order.
I dare you to even try to read your ISP's terms of service. Or the terms of service of lots of websites you access all the time, that you supposedly agree to by accessing the site. Or the contracts you agree to by opening a bank account or renting a car or buying a plane ticket. You'll find that most of those contracts incorporate other documents by reference, which may add up to hundreds of pages, all of which you're supposed to have read.
This action isn't about what businesses have to read. It's about
So make some regulations about that (Score:2)
> This action isn't about what businesses have to read. It's about what information they have to disclose to their customers.
Well no, THIS action has little to do with what has to be disclosed to consumers. If you want some regulations about that, if you see small ISPs engaging in funny business about pricing, make some appropriate regulations. This action is about title II - regulations written for the big phone companies, many of them written for THE phone company, Bell, before it was broken up. The
Re:Wow, just wow. (Score:5, Insightful)
And no, you're being disingenuous: It's stated right in the freaking summary how it will affect the large ones too: They just split their business into multiple distinct 100,000-person "businesses", all of which are owned by Comcast or whomever. These then tell the customers that since you're only doing business with the "tiny company", you aren't entitled to any information on fees, performance or data caps. And that's the real concern here.
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> gobbled up by Trump
How can you blame Trump when these rules were written years before he even got into politics? The requirements are poorly defined and aren't currently implemented in different ways by the twenty (IIRC from the last time I heard) ISPs that are currently required to report this information don't do so in a way that can be compared between them for customers to use when picking an ISP. They are not doing what they're intended to do.
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Yep, at some point in the past few months or so my bills started to say "Make checks payable to Comcast of Delray Beach" rather than "Comcast". I'm so relieved that I'm now with a "small mom and pop ISP" that can now reduce my bill as they're now released from these "burdensome compliance costs".
Meanwhile, my bill has gone up three times in the past 18 months, for strictly data service.
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To be the phone company (Score:3)
ISPs are now subject to Title II regulations as common carriers - the rules written for Verizon and AT&T now apply to ISPs. Ponder for a moment how many regulations a thousand bureaucrats have written over the last several decades for phone companies.
The order which lists which regulations now apply to ISPs as well is 400 pages. Here is is for your reading pleasure:
https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_pub... [fcc.gov]
Note that's not 400 pages of regulations, that's 400 pages of REFERENCES to regulations. The total regula
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Verizon lobbyists not fighting for the little guy (Score:2)
To the extent the regulations were influenced by the phone company's lobbyists, I'm fairly sure Verizon's lobbyists weren't trying to make sure that small companies could fairlt compete with Verizon.
Good VS Bad (Score:1, Informative)
Hidden Fees = Data Caps = Higher Revenue = GOOD
{GOP in unison} SO SAY WE ALL!
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Lack of understanding rather than nefarious (Score:2)
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As a Republican I 100% agree that this is bull. I think it likely the issue though is that republicans instinctively lean toward less regulation and if you are not technically literate, then these requirements could be phrased by someone in such a way as to seem burdensome.
While on a long drive today, I realized two things. The first is that this is an attempt to open up a new market. The second is maybe we'll end up with people paying a fee to use the passing lanes on highways. No more of this equal access to all lanes. Seems like just an logical corollary of the war on net neutrality.
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The second is maybe we'll end up with people paying a fee to use the passing lanes on highways. No more of this equal access to all lanes.
I assume that's what you saw while driving. If not, that's exactly what the Republicans did in my state. And they privatized that lane. Recently they build a private toll road. Shortly before it opened the owners lobbied to have the speed reduced on the existing free road. Then when they found the toll road wasn't profitable (prices are too high) they asked if they could swap with the existing road. Charge a fee on that and let the toll road they build be free. Seriously. And this is a very red sta
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Charge a fee on that and let the toll road they build be free. Seriously. And this is a very red state.
Sounds about right.
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That's actually a really good idea, if the fee is set just high enough to eliminate congestion in that lane, but no higher, so that nobody is ever gouged and so that the managed lane isn't responsible for causing congestion in the anarchy lanes. Then if my son is sick and I have to get him to the doctor, I can pay the fee and bypass traffic. This would give me an option that I didn't have before. Options and competition are go
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That's actually a really good idea, if the fee is set just high enough to eliminate congestion in that lane, but no higher, so that nobody is ever gouged and so that the managed lane isn't responsible for causing congestion in the anarchy lanes. Then if my son is sick and I have to get him to the doctor, I can pay the fee and bypass traffic. This would give me an option that I didn't have before. Options and competition are good things, right?
I don't think this is how that would work. If the tolls are not kept high, the toll lane will become just as congested as the regular lanes.
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Correct, if the fee isn't set high enough to eliminate congestion, there will be congestion. So what's the issue?
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Correct, if the fee isn't set high enough to eliminate congestion, there will be congestion. So what's the issue?
How much you can afford is the issue. That's the point. This is alawys the problem with privately built roads. Let's take a utopian scene. Your local government has the shitz of maintaining the road past your house. So in the libertarian and Republican blessed universe, they sell it to the highest bidder. Your road now belongs to them, in no way do you have any say. So they decide to charge you anything they want to get to your house. You have no choice. So what's the issue?
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No, this is not about charging "anything they want". This is about charging the market equilibrium price to eliminate traffic congestion. Please try to stay on topic.
Of course it is. And it was a comparison, sorry if you can't see that. It is rather obvious that charging more than most people can/will pay will encompass people who are cheap/ don't care/ or would like to, but they cannot afford it. First two are fine - the third, not as much.
How about another idea? How about charging per lane. Right lane nothing. Passing lane a charge that will keep most people out of the passing lane. The same for each other lane of traffic until the inner lane uses a bidding process
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The wealthy are perfectly willing to pay into the road fund to use those lanes, and the poor are only too happy to let them. "Support [for toll lanes] is high across all income groups, with the lowest income group expressing stronger support than the highest income group (80% vs. 70%)." [archive.org] So what's wrong
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No, they are not a public good. Public goods by definition [wikipedia.org] are non-rivalrous, which means one person's use of it does not prevent another person from using it. Traffic prevents people from using the roads; therefore, roads are rivalrous and therefore are not public goods.
Even if the revenue is spent on services for the poor?
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Taking the definition to your extreme, there's no such thing as a public good:
- Water you use is unusable by me. Sure there's lots of water (if you don't live in California..) but its still a rivalrous good.
- Oxygen you breath is unusable by me -- at least not until some plant recycles it but who knows how long that will be. Again, there's lots of it but its still something we can't share.
- A pretty view is rivalrous. If you're standing at the perfect spot at the same time I want to, we can't share (exac
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But it is not a public good. That's why we set a price on it.
But besides roads, can you think of another rivalrous good that's unpriced?
And that makes them very inefficient at moving traffic and a poor use of land. Let's work on fixing that.
Even the most congested, most complained about road in my area moves only about 30% of its daily capacity
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Options and competition are good things, right?
For luxuries, yes. Is bypassing traffic if your son is sick a luxury?
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I think it's cheaper to drive him and pay a toll than to call an ambulance and pay the copay. Not to mention paying less in taxes because the managed lane never gets congested (because it's always priced right at market equilibrium) and so the freeway never again needs to be widened at taxpayer expense just to relieve congestion.
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So you're saying that I, and you, and everyone else should pay higher fees to use the roads at all times and suffere even more congestion in the free lanes if we can't pay up, just because you're too cheap to pay your copay on the (hopefully small) chance that you may need to rush your son to the hospital some day?
And for that matter, are you really going to spend the extra time driving through traffic at (for argument's sake) the posted limit when your son is in critical enough condition to require an ambu
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That would probably just increase congestion overall. The other lanes will be slower, which means cars stay on the road longer, and the congestion will stretch further back on the road. That will affect everybody.
How many highways have a second on ramp that goes directly into the left lane? While you're waiting to merge (and then eventually get over to your "premium" lane), you are stuck in the same traffic. And then when you're exiting you will have the same problem in reverse. Imagine stopping or signific
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That's a good point. It's why all lanes on a freeway ought to be managed lanes.
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isn't the toll on the internet (or paid prioritization) what net neutrality is supposed to prevent?
That's right. You think that Republicans support Net neutrality? Certainly as late as 2015 they were calling it "Obamacare for the internet" https://www.nytimes.com/2015/0... [nytimes.com]
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As a liberal who knows a thing or two about the guts of ISPs I had many arguments about the wisdom of many "Net Neutrality" proposals with my friends. Some of the requirements people wanted amounted to being expected to fill out your tax forms while riding a unicycle along a tight rope.
Of course we don't want low-end users conned into using ISPs that dictate who gets to "be on the Internet." But we also want ISPs to be able to keep the Internet usable even if the latest P2P sharing fad software is written
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Of course we want a "public Internet" but we also will raise holy hell if Company X gets to use the public facility for free and uses more than anyone else to the point where service degrades.
The rational solution to this mess is to require companies to provide X% of public service alongside their buildouts for private endeavors, thus creating a safe harbor which avoids an accounting nightmare, while allowing businesses to do business, and to have a publicly funded watchdog surveil that that bandwidth is publicly available from the outside.
But who pays who what? If the internet goes out to whoever pays the most baksheesh, and therefore gets the most bandwidth, what if the rest of us are left with precious little? I have a pretty good suspicion that the end game of this whole net neutrality fight will be that the big boys will win, and suddenly it becomes the digital equivalent of what cable TV is today. We already hear some people arguing that DSL speeds are adequate for people.
We aren't likely to get any public watchdog, and let's not for
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But who pays who what?
That's for businesses to work out amongst themselves.
If the internet goes out to whoever pays the most baksheesh, and therefore gets the most bandwidth, what if the rest of us are left with precious little?
You set the X% I referred to high enough to provide adequate service to the lowest tier customers.
Frankly a lot of the attention focusing on ISPs is misplaced. The real monopolization happens at the CDN level. No amount of bandwidth is going to make your TCP sessions run fast nationwide if all your servers are in California, that's just a fundamental fact of physics (speed of light.) Extending net neutrality rules to require private server farms to off
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As a liberal who knows a thing or two about the guts of ISPs I had many arguments about the wisdom of many "Net Neutrality" proposals with my friends. Some of the requirements people wanted amounted to being expected to fill out your tax forms while riding a unicycle along a tight rope.
Of course, the entire concept is bull. The (non-government) Internet developed under freedom of companies to freely decide to interconnect according to their business needs. Often one ISP rejected another until a mutually-a
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For all the rhetoric, very few people want full net neutrality. A VOIP packet and a BitTorrent packet just aren't the same and you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who claims otherwise.
What people want is for equivalent traffic to be neutral. My VOIP packet shouldn't have priority over your VOIP packet, and your BitTorrent packet shouldn't have priority over my BitTorrent packet.
The rhetoric breaks down due to this kind of disconnect:
- People claim they want full neutrality when what they really want is e
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Republican - I'll fuck you while you pay me to do it.
Democrat - I'll fuck you and make your neighbor pay me!
Re: Lack of understanding rather than nefarious (Score:2, Interesting)
I propose this to ponder:
Have you considered that other Republican actions to loosen or remove policies in industries you're less familiar with could in fact be almost identical to this case? That is to say, if you were as knowledgeable in other sectors as you are in network infrastructure, it might be the case that many of those decisions to remove "burdensome restrictions" might appear prettt BS-esk and geared to undermine the average consumer/citizen?
I'm not proposing that silly regulations don't exist t
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Thus, instead of Rep
"Small" is misleading (Score:1)
Under 250,000 subscribers should not be considered "small". By this definition, an internet provider who serves every single resident of Reno, Nevada would be considered "small", because Reno has fewer than 250,000 residents.
Then 38,928 Incorporated Cities in US are "Small" (Score:2)
under this rule.
The problem is there are are a total of 39,010 Incorporated Cities in the USA (source: https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com]).
So, for 99.79% of all US cities, net neutrality isn't a thing.
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The third largest city in Denmark has 175k citizens. So if that rule applied there, well. Two cities total would have a chance at getting net neutrality.
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If NO ONE else were interested in servicing your entire town sure. Even then, this clause would apply if and only if they ONLY serviced your town and nothing else. Unless your town is 100 miles away from anything else, I don't see that being a real problem in Denmark.
Reno is not a bad example of a town literally in the middle of nowhere.
You would probably think of it as living on the Moon and net neutrality would probably be low on your list of complaints.
So, uh.... (Score:1)
How long until all the big ISPs do whatever corporate-legalese-bullshit to split into enough "small" ISPs to effectively screw all the customers in the U.S.? By which I mean that they don't actually break up, they just appear to, and legally meet the requirements.
As someone who worked for a small ISP... (Score:2, Interesting)
As someone who worked for a small ISP when the transparency rules were first implemented... the transparency rules do not add burden to the ISP. It just required you to publish the truth about your business practices. If there is a data cap, you have to have the data cap listed. If you throttled the speeds, you had to say you throttled the speeds and under what circumstances (ex: if you download > 20 GB in x time, your speed will get throttled down to x speed for x amount of time). If there was any speci
Re: As someone who worked for a small ISP... (Score:2)
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Encrypt all traffic. Than it all looks the same. No throttling. Many people on Private torrent sites do this just to hide their illicit activity from prying ISP's and RIAA/MPAA. I try to encrypt everything legal or not. I also tunnel almost all traffic.
Precedent (Score:3)
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That would be a good thing if it were to happen. Self regulating Anti-Trust.
Hey Ass-hole (Score:2)
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Everyone on the 21 pages after page 4 in this list:
http://broadbandnow.com/All-Pr... [broadbandnow.com]
Most are rural providers that only cover a few thousand subscribers over a large area, and only have a few employees. Installation and cable work are contracted out, and lines are piggy-backed on existing telecommunication wires. Equipment is co-located at the telcos. Most of the "offices" I've seen are storefonts in strip malls.
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Keeping the service offerings up to date in a list like that is an impossible task. They change rapidly. For that matter, the list of providers itself is surely no longer 100% accurate; some of the small providers have probably merged, been acquired, or folded.
But it conveys an important truth. Most of us are served by a few large providers, but there is a long tail of smaller businesses that provide internet service.
Re:Mom & Pop internet providers? (Score:5, Interesting)
As a sysadmin, speaking very unofficially, from a small regional provider, and who used to single-handedly run a small local isp (which is still a withering hosting service), fees and caps had ought to be clear up front, and network capacity reporting is not a big deal. It's something you'd better be monitoring anyhow.
Re:Mom & Pop internet providers? (Score:4)
The trouble comes when these small "rural providers" get bought up by giant conglomerates [arstechnica.com]. These "holding companies" can cheat the system, claiming the benefits of small when they've actually got deep deep pockets that could pay for compliance, but instead ear-mark that money to lobbyists and the "regulation hurts business" crusade.
The original exemption for ISPs with 100,000 or fewer subscribers was applied to the aggregated total of subscribers "across all affiliates," so that small ISPs owned by big holding companies wouldn't be exempt.
The new regulations change that. I think it's bad enough screaming vicious hate toward a known enemy like Comcast, but it's gotta be worse for people relying on some small service-provider that enjoys small-business exemptions but without any folksy small-business courtesy and service we're supposed to associate with small business, 'cause the small businessman sold out to an offer he don't refuse years ago, and now that "small business" is just one of a thousand pages in some nameless guy's portfolio whose only interest is income and territory.
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You know, a small two-person operation that serves fewer than a quarter million people.
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LOL, yup that would be a mom and pop shop
Re:Mom & Pop internet providers? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd take it to mean ISPs like Brazos WiFi [brazoswifi.com], a small ISP that operates in the rural areas close to where I live. It was started about a decade back by a lone tech guy who was frustrated that none of the major ISPs were serving the town he lived in. At this point, it's his full-time job and he's putting up a handful of new towers every year to expand his region, improve his service, and lower his prices. I'd imagine he has customers in the low thousands at this point, since he's serving several rural towns [brazoswifi.com] and has even started getting into the outskirts of the main cities in the area.
I'd consider that a mom and pop ISP.
Gig 'em (Score:2)
I've talked to that guy before.
Howdy! (Score:2)
I've never actually talked to him, nor am I a customer, but I want to see him succeed since it's clear that he's providing a useful service to a number of people. Plus, if he gets big enough to expand just a tiny bit further into town, he may actually reach my house, which would let me ditch the big-name ISP I'm incredibly dissatisfied with.
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Aren't you a happy ray of sunshine.
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