The editors of the Wall Street Journal pervert the language to describe a laissez-faire approach to major carriers as “net neutrality”:
One of President Trump’s more ambitious appointees is Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai, who on Wednesday unveiled an outline for rolling back Obama Administration rules that regulated the web like a 1890s railroad. Mr. Pai will be maligned by the left for undermining the “open internet,†but his plan would restore freedom and innovation that the federal government disrupted.
Mr. Pai in a speech at Washington’s Newseum sketched out a plan to untangle the 2015 “net neutrality†rules that classified the internet as a public utility under the Communications Act, a law carbon-dated to the 1930s. The rules give the FCC broad authority to dictate whether broadband practices are “reasonable.†Liberal pressure groups like Public Knowledge and Free Press said that nefarious cable companies might someday, somewhere block websites or slow browsing. Years later, no one can drum up an example.
That last sentence is untrue. Comcast is known to have throttled its customers’ access to certain sites. It was sued for it in Comcast Corp. v. FCC. Verizon has also done so but hasn’t been sued.
“Net neutrality” means that all traffic on the Internet is treated the same. There are several things that Internet service providers do to violate net neutrality: throttling and capping. “Throttling” mean a restriction on the speed of transfers including by site. “Capping” means setting limits on the amount of data that can be transferred also including on a by site basis.
Throttling or capping or the fear of them allows Internet service providers to sit athwart their Internet connections like the robber barons of old extracting tolls from content providers. When not prevented from doing so we can be confident they will because that’s what has happened in other countries. In Canada and many other countries around the world service providers both throttle and cap because they can.
I have no problem with either practice when they’re written into service contracts. I do when they aren’t. Internet service providers should provide the services they have contracted to provide.
Thirty years ago and more attempt after attempt at developing proprietary nationwide networks failed because they were proprietary. The Internet succeeded because it was open. Yes, that open quality helps big companies like Google, Facebook, or Netflix. Without an open Internet Google, Facebook, or Netflix would never have gotten big. The Internet service providers should not be allowed to determine what content you are able to access or what its cost should be.
Since we don’t live in a house anymore, all of our internet is via cell service along with occasional wifi. These are almost all metered connections so data usage is usually a concern for the end user.
One other area where the mobile companies are chipping away at net neutrality is offering bandwidth that doesn’t go against a users monthly data allotment. Most of these are for streaming services. The FCC does not appear to want to stamp this out, as it’s quite popular. At least for mobile data there is actual competition, unlike home internet.
Anyway, I don’t want to see ISP’s become monopoly gatekeepers able to abuse their standing as middlemen to get rents from both providers and users.
Yeah, me neither. Here’s an example.
Comcast is in the process of introducing a Roku app that will allow users to put complete Comcast cable lineups on any station in their network rather than requiring a cable connection and box. I don’t mind paying for that (although I think the fee they’re talking about is outlandish).
What worries me is when Comcast controls the access, the app, and the connection it will be a license to print money.
My personal policy prescription is to (a) prevent ISP’s from owning content companies and force ISP’s that own content companies to divest. So no Comcast/NBC, no ATT/Time Warner, no Verizon/AOL/Yahoo. (b) promote competition with no ISP mergers, i.e no T Mobile/Sprint, no Time Warner/Charter/Brighthorse.
If we had done that, we would not need strict net neutrality rules. T-Mobile’s zero rating is a violation of net neutrality but it is free and open to all content providers and made possible unlimited data — which turns out to be more popular in consumer eyes then strict net neutrality. Only because there is competition in wireless and T-Mobile didn’t own a content provider was T-Mobile incentivized to do things for consumers.
What policy does the US end up with instead — let content providers merge with ISP’s and ISP’s merge among themselves. Where’s a good trust buster when you need one?
Andy, does saying you “don’t live in a house anymore,” mean you have moved into a trailer mode, that you were earlier discussing? If so, how is that kind of lifestyle going?
Jan,
Yes, we’ve been living in a motorhome since just after Christmas. We are currently stationary until my wife officially retires which is just over a month away. After that we are taking a family sabbatical for 1-2 years to travel around North America. Presumably we’ll settle down somewhere, hopefully out west, until the kids (we have 3) are finished with school and then we’d like to travel again.
So far the transition has gone extremely well. There are 5 of is in about 400 square feet and, if anything, the family harmony is better.
Before this we lived in a (rented) ~3000 square foot McMansion in an upper-middle class HOA neighborhood which I hated except for the pool.
We’ve also embraced a much more minimalist lifestyle generally, though we’ve never been huge consumers. I can’t imagine going back to the desolation of modern suburbia, but I’m sure the kids will want some stability, so we’ll see where we land.
As a consequence, I’ve done a lot of research on mobile internet and in 5-10 years I see a convergence where over-the-air internet will really compete with cable. We’re almost there now.
Curious,
I agree with you that consolidation of content and service providers is likely a major problem, especially long-term.