FCC Can Define Markets With Only One ISP as 'Competitive', Court Rules (arstechnica.com) 163
An appeals court has upheld a Federal Communications Commission ruling that broadband markets can be competitive even when there is only one Internet provider. From a report: The FCC "rationally chose which evidence to believe among conflicting evidence," the court ruling said. The FCC voted last year to eliminate price caps imposed on some business broadband providers such as AT&T and Verizon. The FCC decision eliminated caps in any given county if 50 percent of potential customers "are within a half mile of a location served by a competitive provider." This is known as the "competitive market test." Because of this, broadband-using businesses might not benefit from price controls even if they have just one choice of ISP.
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Just move...This probably just applies to rural shitholes anyways.
Businesses in rural shitholes are often the type you do NOT want in your city.
Have you ever smelled a chicken coop?
What about a processing plant for animal carcasses?
It is for everyone's benefit that they're in the middle of nowhere.
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But there is need for a chicken coop to have a competitively priced web presence.
Just because it's not a market that you're in doesn't mean it's irrelevent. I had a contract for a cotton futures trading company recently. It's not something I'd even heard of before... but I wear cotton shirts and I eat chicken. For the people that make those things possible and profitable: they need to run their businesses well.
Re:just move (Score:5, Informative)
These are places were your food is grown.
Despite looking like a painting from the 1800's With fields of produce, and livestock. Modern farms are actually often more High Tech then most Silicon Valley offices. With Robots, Self Driving Vehicles, Big Data analytics, real time market access.... Much of this all done over the farmers phone, when he is taking a 5 minute break from shoving crap.
Affordable High Speed Internet is key for rural areas.
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These rural places also mostly support this kind of laissez faire approach to regulation. Which means they are either getting what they want or what they deserve. Either they'll like the results, in which case neither they or us have anything to complain about, or if they don't maybe they'll decide there is some value to good regulation.
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Re:just move (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't have a farm, and I live as close to a major city as I can without subjecting my kids to its school system.
With that said, my uncle does have a farm. He's a leftover hippie, so would not exactly qualify for your stereotype. But even he is completely disgusted by regulations on farms. The amount of paperwork, licensing, etc he needed to carry out some vermiculture and composting was insane. Farmers don't necessarily object to all regulations - especially the anti-monopoly sort we're talking about here. What farmers hate is when city politicians with absolutely no experience with farming whatsoever enact laws that impact the viability of farming.
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I don't know enough about the business to have an opinion on that article - but yes, that is very much the sentiment I was trying to express. There are good regulations and bad regulations. Farmers (in my limited experience) aren't anti-regulation, they are anti-bad-regulation.
Re:just move (Score:4, Interesting)
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Well, in that case they should definitely let people who live in the city and have no idea how to farm tell them how to manage their land :)
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Correct - and I say this as one of those city folk - that's why there is such a disconnect... there is just such a huge difference in point of view between city and rural. And not just on farm regulations.... pick an issue! Find me a rural vegan. Gun control is fairly pointless in rural areas as they have little problem with gun homicides. Environmentalism is viewed very differently by people who live and work with nature vs. people who don't see why anyone should need or want to "defile" it. For that matte
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Food? No. That would be if you fed them to pigs, which is totally legal and would not run afoul of the regulations. He was raising worms, not food. Unless you eat them, in which case I'll bring my own food for dinner.
I'd need a couple of hours of your time to explain the complex machinations (which I don't completely understand myself), but tl/dr is that because he WASN'T selling the worms as food, he became a "waste processing facility" by some definitions but not others. Under some code, the worms were li
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Those worm farms can be mighty hazardous [youtube.com].
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The people may politically vote that way, and talk the talk, but in reality they are very dependent on regulations. You will often see many exceptions on "anti-socialism" bills that seem to target farmers.
Just because you may disagree with their politics, it doesn't mean they shouldn't benefit from regulations just because they didn't vote for it.
Re:just move (Score:5, Informative)
Not to mention agriculture is a HUGE use of drone surveillance - often to measure irrigation, weeds, and other properties, as well as satellite imagery.
Except when receiving tons of farm subsidies. You want to know why Trump is harping on Canadian dairy? It's because in the US and Europe, dairy prices have crashed. They are making so much of it that if it wasn't for farm subsidies, they'd be out of business because the price is lower than the price of production.
Thus they see the higher prices for dairy in Canada as a savior, but then again, it'll likely collapse the prices and more farmers are out of business.
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Where the hell do you live?
Milk is currently $1.89 per gallon at my local big box grocery store. Even the boutique dairy in the next county is only $3.00 per gallon.
7/11 is $2.75
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Shows as $5.68/gal here in Dallas. The non-organic is $1.49 but it expires in a week or less whereas this has an expiration date over a month out. Milk you'd want to give a human like Fairlife is more.
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In the U.S., if you do that, telecomms companies, even ones that were asked and explicitly refused to serve an area come out of the woodwork and sue for any stupid excuse they can find.
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You really need to stop using that excuse. It's not relevant. If there is a road and a phone line, there can be fiber. A fiber connection is going to cost what it's going to cost, but that doesn't mean you can't do it yourself if nobody else will do it for you.
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This probably just applies to rural s...holes anyways.
Actually, the price caps remain in rural areas where only one ISP exists and a competitor is more than 1/2 mile away. So it seems to be exactly the opposite to me.
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Yea, rural shitholes like Los Angeles.
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There's no reason to cram everyone into a dense urban center if so many people can work remotely from the comfort of home with no resource-wasting commutes.
You're the one with the backward way of thinking and this is a huge reason why rural broadband is so important.
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Truth isn't truth.
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Truth isn't truth.
Contradictions aren't contradictions?
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Government can now declare fruit is a vegetable [wikipedia.org]
Re:In other news, (Score:5, Funny)
Government can now declare fruit is a vegetable [wikipedia.org]
Intelligence is knowing that the tomato is a fruit; wisdom is knowing not to put one in a fruit salad.
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So Maine with its state vegetable, the watermelon, has no intelligence?
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Intelligence is knowing that the tomato is a fruit; wisdom is knowing not to put one in a fruit salad.
Charisma is selling someone a tomato salad.
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Where are they? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: Where are they? (Score:1)
We're right here. And let us tell you that it will all be ok. An invisible hand is the BEST hand to stroke you into a calm submission. Just lay back and enjoy it. Relax your butt muscles. It won't hurt if you don't struggle.
Priorities (Score:2, Interesting)
Where are all the Trump/Pai supporters to tell us how this is really a good thing and the invisible hand of the market will make everything all right? Is it possible there is some level of corporate cronyism that even they can't justify?
We're right here, and we don't necessarily agree with everything the administration does.
For example, I'm completely in favor of allowing women the ability to choose to have an abortion, with minimal government oversight (regulate the safety, not the right to choose).
But I also know that there are larger issues at hand, the two most obvious ones being the economy and immigration.
I accept that some of the smaller issues won't be handled in the way I think is optimal, but the bigger issues seem to be working
Re:Priorities (Score:4, Insightful)
Where are all the Trump/Pai supporters to tell us how this is really a good thing and the invisible hand of the market will make everything all right? Is it possible there is some level of corporate cronyism that even they can't justify?
But I also know that there are larger issues at hand, the two most obvious ones being the economy and immigration.
For example, I really like the new economy, and I think illegal immigration needs to be reined in..
Yet illegal immigration has already been way down for years before your orange dreamboat took office. And do you have any actual numbers that indicate that the illegal immigration that occurs has a negative impact on the country? I agree that laws are laws and should be enforced, but everything is a matter of priority (we don't insist that every driver who speeds MUST be fined) and I just don't see the evidence that illegal immigration is anywhere being the biggest threat to the US right now. That's why it always smells of racism when people complain about immigration, the concern just never matches the actual impact of the issue.
Also, what "new economy"? Are you seriously suggestion that the Trump administration has had a significant impact on the economy? the economy that has been steadily getting stronger since about 2008? I'll concede that there's some (possibly temporary) bump in the stock market caused by the tax cuts allowing corporations to do massive buy-backs of stock, but to equate that with economical gains on a global level is just silly. What else has Trump done (specifically) to boost the economy? Spend government funds at his own hotels and golf clubs?
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Look at why most migration (legal and otherwise) occurs... It is due to disparity of conditions between the source and destination country, where the migrant is planning to have a significantly higher quality of life in the destination country.
Legal migration then actually hurts the source country, because legal migration is typically only available to the top percentages of a population (smartest, best educated, richest etc)... If you allow the smartest people from a poor country to migrate to a richer cou
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Look at why most migration (legal and otherwise) occurs... It is due to disparity of conditions between the source and destination country, where the migrant is planning to have a significantly higher quality of life in the destination country.
And in the absence of any movement at all in really low unemployment numbers what this quality of life for the person equates to is GDP growth for the nation. Thank you immigrant friend for boosting our economy.
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Yes, it generally benefits the destination country - at the expense of the source country, which only serves to fuel further migration. The rich get richer, and the poor get poorer.
Why do people keep blaming the market for this? (Score:4, Insightful)
The only areas free of the problem are the ones where government got out of the way and allowed multiple ISPs to compete.
Re:Why do people keep blaming the market for this? (Score:5, Interesting)
These areas have only one ISP because local governments awarded a monopoly, and prohibit competition
People aren't blaming government because this claim is false.
Local governments awarded monopolies for cable TV. Those monopolies were time-limited. They've all expired. And if you took a moment to think about it, you'd notice a cable TV monopoly is not an Internet service monopoly.
So no, this is not the ebil big govment. This is the result of the natural monopoly you get in any utility - the company that has already paid to run lines to every house has a massive competitive advantage over the companies that have not run those lines yet. And they're able to use that advantage to crush any competitor that tries to enter the market.
A free market does not prevent this from happening, and actually acts to maintain this situation. Which is why we need the ebil big govment to prevent exploiting the natural monopoly so that competitors can actually enter these markets so that they can become functional markets.
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People aren't blaming government because this claim is false.
The $3 dollar surcharge on my ISP (which does no other business but internet) labeled "exclusive access fee" is proof in the opposite direction.
My city council sold exclusive access to two ISPs, one for DSL, and one for cable. No other wired ISPs are allowed within the city limits.
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You need to explain the economics, to make sense. Existing company, with existing infrastructure has largely paid off it's debt and has raised it's price as high as economically possible (supply and demand without competition). New company can undercut that, but needs to borrow money, to start building. So it borrows money and now needs to generate revenue to pay off debt and undercuts the incumbent monopoly because big fat margins of the incumbent. The incumbent, then drops prices to below the new competit
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Last I checked governments actually grant permits when you apply for them, since that's a significant fundraising stream for smaller cities and towns.
Also, rejection of a permit can be appealed, to either city/town entities or the courts, where winning would be easy since the rejection was arbitrary and as a bonus, that would fund a chunk of your new ISP's rollout.
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Because AT&T, Verizon and all the established telecoms have such a stellar track record when it comes to snooping on people's data.
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Re:Why do people keep blaming the market for this? (Score:4, Insightful)
As jeff4747 explained to you, those exclusive agreements have all expired and never covered internet in the first place. I'll enlarge for you. They were made in the first place because before that there were zero cable companies willing to serve the area due to high starting costs to recoup. So they were granted a temporary monopoly and regulations to go with it so they would have a sure way to recoup their costs. They have now done that a few times over.
The problem is that the same market forces that kept them out of the area before now keep everyone else out of the area now PLUS there's an incumbent provider to contend with. Without further government action, those forces will remain in place next year and for decades to follow.
Now, as for the FCC, I'm not so sure that 5 competitors is enough to make a healthy market, much less only 2. Having a "competitor" a half mile away is as good as not having one.
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Really? I thought it was mostly because the last mile infrastructure is so expensive that if there is an incumbent other companies don't want to risk that major investment.
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Its not going to be a new ISP out in the wider community.
No ISP wants to just be an ISP for a gated community.
By giving some freedom back to who and what an ISP is local communities can grow their own ISP without federal laws setting out what an approved competitive ISP is.
By removing more and more federal NN rules and network laws people all over the USA can have the freedom to become their own ISP.
Without having to be come a "competitive
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Think of a gated community setting up its own new fast network.
Its not going to be a new ISP out in the wider community.
No ISP wants to just be an ISP for a gated community.
An ISP run as a co-op by the members of the gated community does.
By giving some freedom back to who and what an ISP is local communities can grow their own ISP without federal laws setting out what an approved competitive ISP is.
By removing more and more federal NN rules and network laws people all over the USA can have the freedom to become their own ISP.
Horseshit. Net neutrality for a new ISP is the default. Networking equipment is out-of-the-box neutral. Only asshats in the incumbent national ISPs want to violate net neutrality and they want to do it for more money, not because it's either necessary for operation or better for the customers. Neither is true.
Without having to be come a "competitive" new ISP state/nation wide.
More horseshit. No new ISP has to instantly be national before it's legal, Not now, not ever. Nor does this law make it any easie
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Where are all the Trump/Pai supporters to tell us how this is really a good thing and the invisible hand of the market will make everything all right? Is it possible there is some level of corporate cronyism that even they can't justify?
As much as this may surprise you one can vote for Trump while hating corruption and cronyism. I say this because the alternative was Hillary, who is known for corruption and cronyism. Really the 2016 election was the best evidence that a "none of the above" option should always be available.
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Replace bullshit with... nothing? (Score:3)
The original rule was obvious bullshit. Price controls should be imposed unless 100% of potential customers have at least one competitive provider at each and every location.
Eliminating even the pretense of controlling the monopoly is not better. A new rule should actually control the monopoly. Or better yet, make it untenable to be a monopoly.
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Not really a rational approach; line extensions should be viable for business users (to a point). The challenge comes when one provider is the LEC for one side of a street, but another is on the opposite side. It takes a CLEC to cross the lines, renting access from either or both providers.
Likewise, should bad locations in a city/area be given preference for subsidies when alternate locations exist that have competition?
Personally, I would love to see opportunities for small ISPs because of the broken mark
FCC dismantal (Score:4, Informative)
Trump appointees continue mission of dismantling their institutions.
So have AT&T and Medicom established a checker-board pattern of non-compete territory all of which is half a mile from the other's guy's territory?
And which telecom do you think Ajit Pai is going to go work for once he's kicked out?
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Too far. While it might feel good to say "go punch a NAZI", advocating violence just puts you down at the level of the brownshirts. You're not helping our side.
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Whatever you say anonymous Russian instigator.
I'm going to bet that we literally accomplish voting Trump out of office here in a couple years. If Mueller doesn't get him first. Good luck with Putin though.
C student in English (Score:4, Interesting)
How else can something be competitive?
Re:C student in English (Score:5, Interesting)
The FCC assume that:
1) if there's a competitive ISP serving someone half a mile from you, then that ISP would be willing to extend their network to cover you. That's probably not the case, but it's what the FCC decided to (pretend to?) believe. Therefore, the FCC can claim that you have a choice of changing to that other provider
2) The fact that people have an alternative provider and could switch to it, means that the ISPs in that area have to keep the price down.
3) ISPs are going to set prices for everyone in the county to be the same, so if *most* of the county has an alternative provider and could switch to it, then that keeps prices down for everyone in the county.
Of course, every point I just listed is wrong, but that's what the FCC decided to (pretend to?) believe. This happens to be good news for the existing ISPs, which can raise their prices in every case where the FCC's assumptions are wrong.
What I keep wondering is (Score:3)
I wouldn't mind seeing corruption be a bigger issue for Americans. They claim it is, but when it's
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Swamp the FCC with complaints.
{o.o}
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I presume each customer is provided a half mile of fiber to connect to a competitor if they wish.
This is why the Republicans (Score:5, Interesting)
And I know it's not popular to call out one party because there's a bunch of pro-corporate Dems who helped stack those courts. But the Democrats at least have a party wing that refuses corporate & PAC money (they're called Justice Democrats, look 'em up). I know of no such animal for the other side. The Dems seem somewhat redeemable. e.g. the pro-consumer elements might take over at some point in a future I could conceive of. Barring a seismic shift like we got in the 60s after the civil rights movement I don't see that happening to the Republican party. At a certain point it's time to call a spade a spade.
Welp good thing I'm not a SJW (Score:2)
The devil is in the details here... (Score:2)
As I understand it, The rule is that if there is a competitor with 1/2 of a mile, they can rule that the market has competition. But if there are no competitors, then the price controls apply.
So I think the headline is a bit misleading here.
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Only if you pretend an ISP would extend their network that 1/2 mile to service new customers.....who would suddenly be getting "great" deals from their incumbent ISP as soon as the competitor filed for permits, guaranteeing that 1/2 mile extension is a loss.
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Re:The devil is in the details here... (Score:5, Insightful)
The point is that the FCC is using a standard that is utterly divorced from reality, whether or not they have price caps.
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My point is the headline is misleading as the new rule only effects a subset of ISP customers nation wide not all of us.
I'm not arguing to justify or vilify the FCC's actions, only point out that they are not changing anything for the majority of people out there.
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This does, however open the market to create a sham ISP that rents a line from the ISP with a local monopoly. This new ISP then "offers service" to one house every 1600/sqrt(2) meters in a grid. The service can be poor quality or exorbitant; it doesn't matter. The point is not to actually serve that customer.
Then, everyone is within 800m of a place with "competition," and the real ISP set prices without restriction.
Half a mile (Score:2)
Sounds like the incumbent is being tricked into raising their prices until the nearby competitor pulls their cables into the area. Then your lawyer better find a reason to sue the incumbent when they bring their prices down to undercut you.
Ignorance proven (Score:5, Insightful)
50 percent of potential customers "are within a half mile of a location served by a competitive provider."
WTF? Has the government been proceeding with their ears plugged for the past decade?
The whole issue is The last mile problem
A competing provider is not going to travel Half a Mile to try and grab another provider's customers ---- buildout is so extremely expensive that typically there is a tacit agreement between so-called "competitors" that they will stay away from other providers' turf.
Just TRY and get a cable company to service you whose nearest line is 1/2 a mile away.
Extending service by 1/2 mile of thickline is something like $30,000+ in a suburban/rural area, and potentially half a million or more in build costs to run the additional cable in an urban area ---- thus they aren't inclined to build, especially when the consequence is violating a de-facto unwritten informal but anti-competitive agreement b/w neighboring providers that risks causing revenue loss from losing other customers.
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So, what would you do in order to encourage the actual competition? By saying a half-mile, you need about 20 individual customers to justify a line extension in suburbia, improving access. If you can get 30 you are golden. Sure, if it is a half-mile for 3-5 subscribers it is hard to justify still, but the more penetration you have the more options there are for everyone.
The anti-competitive practices might need some regulation though...
Re:Ignorance proven (Score:4, Funny)
WTF? Has the government been proceeding with their ears plugged for the past decade?
It's difficult to hear with all that lobbyist money stuffed in your ears.
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I am sitting here 200' from neighors ON ALL SIDES, that have a sort of real "high speed", by antiquated FCC definitions, choice, DSL or Charter Spectrum. I am 1/4 mile from the nearest FIOS connection. I have no market I can call upon for alternatives. I am too far away from their poles to serve. It's the bane of a large piece of land in the middle of a sea of 60'x140' lots. The state cannot do anything, not that it would being California, because the FCC has preempted the field. And the FCC will not act be
To paraphrase Arthur Dent: (Score:2)
And just think (Score:5, Insightful)
If Kavanaugh gets put on the Supreme Court, ISPs like Verizon/ATT/Comcast will be given free reign to rape and pillage users as they see fit.
If one ISP is considered a "competitive market", then what's a little throttling and price gouging among friends?
Density (Score:3)
Irony alert! (Score:2)
Welcome to the new world where one choice is competitive. Newspeak brought to you by the GOP.
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Well, it DIDN't happen under the Democrats, it *IS* happening under the GOP. Newspeak, right here, right now.
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(*) Much better economy, end of ISIS, getting our allies to pay more for their own defense, renegotiating trade deals with EU and Mexico (with Canada and China coming up), defunding terrorism by defunding Iran, tax rebates, the list goes on...)
US should stick solely to their own hemisphere. Only reason ISIS even appeared is that US and Britain toppled all more or less sane governments in middle east just so they could get a better deal on oil.
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To be fair, those governments weren't terribly sane. They were brutal dictators. ....who were in power because the French and British drew more-or-less random borders in the former Ottoman Empire at the end of WWI, creating countries that were utterly ungovernable by anyone other than brutal dictators.
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Re:Sounds like an opportunity (Score:5, Informative)
How come we never hear any Democrat candidates harp on this issue?
How many votes would it get them? Or a Republican candidate, for that matter? Probably only a rounding error, especially since this ruling just happened and it's going to take some time for these ISPs to exploit the situation enough to attract attention.
So instead of campaigning on this narrow issue that isn't upsetting many people (yet), make it broader like repealing the laws banning municipal broadband and/or going after companies like Verizon that failed to live up to their service commitments.
Much better economy
Except it isn't much better. It's a continuation of the recovery from 2008. You'll notice there's been no inflection points you can point to where a trend reversed. Also, you're ignoring the problem we've had for the last 20 years - the vast majority of voters aren't benefiting from that better economy. Wages are flat or down depending on industry, so run-of-the-mill voters aren't particularly excited that investment bankers are making more money.
end of ISIS
They're actually still around....and not being attacked by US or US-backed forces. Assad and the Russians are the ones fighting them. We aren't talking about them because it's not US bombs falling on them.
getting our allies to pay more for their own defense
They're continuing to follow the commitments they made to George W Bush. There has been no change.
renegotiating trade deals with EU and Mexico
There's no trade deal with the EU.
The deal with Mexico is actually a US-Canada-Mexico deal, so it's not done yet either.....also nothing has been announced about that not-quite-deal that is an improvement over NAFTA, so I'm not sure why you're celebrating NAFTA version 1.2. Oooh! Now we renegotiate every 6 years instead of renegotiating whenever we want to.....hurray!!
defunding terrorism by defunding Iran
The branches of Islamic terrorism that attacked the US is funded by the Saudis, and Trump is giving the Saudis more money and guns.
tax rebates
No tax rebates have been passed. There's a massive tax cut, but it's insignificant to the vast majority of taxpayers.....and it also should result in everyone laughing at Republicans when they start crying about the deficit again.
It's almost like you guys have a media environment designed to misinform you.....
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It's not just about votes (Score:2)
Even if you're a white knight who wants NN there's only so much you can do. That's certain
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For all the good things coming out of this administration (and admit it, lots of people see the things coming out of the administration as good*)
Yep, there's a lot of worthless fucking fascists in this country that are stupider than ratshit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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By that logic, you could argue that even if we only had one ISP in the whole USA, it would still be competitive based on comparative rates with international ISPs, right? Also have you ever lived in rural Indiana? I'm from there and I can tell you that service in those areas is nowhere near as good as the larger cities. To be competitive you have to have comparable services. Quality rural service is an afterthought to these companies because they know there are no other options.
Also, if they cared about com
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