
F.C.C. Is Expected to Propose Regulating the Internet as a Utility - NearAP
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/03/technology/in-net-neutrality-push-fcc-is-expected-to-propose-regulating-the-internet-as-a-utility.html
======
jkn
Pretty impressed with the negativity here. Just a year ago, I remember all the
stories on HN with people lamenting that the FCC doesn't have the guts to
regulate broadband as a utility under title II [1,2,3] (admittedly with a
minority speaking against title II, most prominently rayiner, whose comments I
generally look forward to for an interesting contrarian view).

Y Combinator even published an open letter[4]. Quoting:

 _Title II of the Communications Act seems the most appropriate way to
properly define broadband ISPs to be offering telecommunications. Speaking on
behalf of Y Combinator, I’m urging you to adopt such a rule._

And here we are. It seems to me that the community has always been complaining
about the different FCC approaches on the subject, and in favor of title II,
until the FCC yielded. Politicians must think the tech community is a
frustrating beast to work with.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7750036](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7750036)

[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7057634](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7057634)

[3]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7637147](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7637147)

[4] [http://blog.ycombinator.com/y-combinator-has-filed-an-
offici...](http://blog.ycombinator.com/y-combinator-has-filed-an-official-
comment-with-the-fcc)

~~~
MCRed
Bottom line is that net neutrality comes out of the desire for people to be
able to access any site they want without penalties due to traffic shaping or
other shenanigans.

The reason they are concerned is that the cable companies and to a lesser
extent wireless and DSL companies are doing this.

And why do they have the power to do this? Why don't people just vote with
their feet and switch to a competitor?

Because they are all monopolies.

Every cable company in every city I've lived in the USA has been a locally
granted monopoly with the city extracting massive amounts of money from the
monthly cable bill in "Franchise" fees.

Every provider of POTS service to your houses and apartments is a regulated
monopoly. And while they have to let DSL companies access the lines and long
distance competition, the barriers to entry are still there, and the level of
regulation is stifling making it hard to compete.

Every wireless carrier is a monopoly-- because they all have monopoly powers
over bands of spectrum the federal government sold to them. And while multiple
bands were sold, only 3 max bands were sold for mobile in any metro area,
reducing competition. (The government claimed that they had to reduce
competition to boost the prices that the spectrum sold for-- probably true--
monopolies are very valuable!)

So, in response, these companies engage in rent seeking, to cover the massive
taxes they pay to the federal government but also to maximize the value of the
monopoly they paid so much to establish.

And as a result, people get mad at this rent seeking and demand net
neutrality.

And what do they propose as a solution? Regulation! Treat it like a utility!

Well, I worked in the electric industry. Another utility that is highly
regulated, engages in rent seeking and is, a monopoly over its area.

People pay way too much for electricity in this country as a result. And we
have a poor service level-- like the brownouts in California a decade ago that
were created when regulations made it illegal to both make and sell
electricity, literally prohibiting the provisioning of additional supply.
(which naturally the left decided to characterize as "de-regualtion". How
making it illegal to provide electricity by regulation is "de-regulation" I'll
never know.)

Seeing a lot of green accounts? probably people who know their karma will be
killed for daring to speak out against the leftist desire to regulate
everything, despite the fact that, once again, regulation is the cause of the
problem. (I consider granting a monopoly and prohibiting competition to be
"Regulation", though an extreme form of course.)

Nothing better exemplifies the old saying "Government is a disease
masquerading as it's own cure" then the calls for more regulation to fix the
problems of regulation.

Most people won't subject their karma to the onslaught of down votes that
daring to take a non-leftist position results in on this site.

But sometimes you have to take a stand.

And really, it's just astounding that people talk about net neutrality and
pretend like these aren't government granted monopolies. Such denial!

~~~
rayiner
> Every cable company in every city I've lived in the USA has been a locally
> granted monopoly with the city extracting massive amounts of money from the
> monthly cable bill in "Franchise" fees.

In no city is the cable company actually a "locally granted monopoly." Every
franchise agreement I've seen points out that it's non-exclusive.

Technologists have a fundamental misconception that leads to a lot of
cognitive dissonance and confused reasoning: that building wireline
infrastructure is a lucrative business that companies can't wait to get into,
and would were it not for "regulatory capture" and legal roadblocks. But it's
not. It's a business with large up-front costs, expensive maintenance costs,
expensive unionized workforces, etc.

> Every wireless carrier is a monopoly-- because they all have monopoly powers
> over bands of spectrum the federal government sold to them

You're punning on the word "monopoly." Anyone who owns property has a
"monopoly" over it. But that does not make them a monopoly. In most cities,
you have 3-4 options for wireless service.

> Another utility that is highly regulated, engages in rent seeking and is, a
> monopoly over its area.

Most electric utilities _are_ monopolies, because it's illegal to deploy
competing electrical service.

~~~
MCRed
The cable franchise agreements are exclusive. That's why you don't see two
companies offering cable service. If they weren't you other companies would
compete.

Regarding wireless, you don't seem to understand how the industry is
structured. While it's true there are many brand names on the shelf in
walmart, there are only 3 actual providers in a given metro region. Virgin,
for instance, uses Sprints network, which is a combination of deals done with
the owners of spectrum across the country.

~~~
rayiner
> The cable franchise agreements are exclusive. That's why you don't see two
> companies offering cable service. If they weren't you other companies would
> compete.

Nope.[1] Exclusive franchise agreements are illegal under federal law since
1996. There is no competition because the business proposition sucks. The only
sensible play in most places is to try and target a niche market of wealthy
neighborhoods that'll pay for the triple play. That is prohibited under most
franchise agreements.

Four nationwide competitors isn't a monopoly any more than Pepsi and Coke are,
who own almost all soft drink brands.

[1] e.g.
[http://www.wilmingtonde.gov/docs/1320/3716Rev1.pdf](http://www.wilmingtonde.gov/docs/1320/3716Rev1.pdf)
(Second whereas paragraph).

~~~
jsprogrammer
Some municipalities limit the structure of the entity offering the service
however (eg. cannot be substantially and exclusively owned by the ratepayers,
or their agent(s)), however the FCC seems to be working on getting those
restrictions thrown out.

~~~
dooptroop
"... cannot be substantially and exclusively owned by the ratepayers ..."

Does that sentence mean that it's illegal for a municipality to form co-ops,
and then for example lay their own fiber and then share the costs equally?

~~~
starnixgod
Yes

------
skywhopper
The major critique quoted here comes from David Farber of Carnegie-Mellon, who
worries that classifying Internet access under Title II will allow it to be
taxed.

If that's the worst thing you can think of, we're in good shape.

~~~
dkhenry
The power to tax is the power to destroy.

~~~
skylan_q
I don't understand how people can disagree with this. He's perfectly correct.
How often does one cite the price of cigarettes to quit smoking them?

~~~
glesica
That's nonsensical. It all depends on the utility of the smoker. Cigarette
taxes are, in theory at least, Pigouvian taxes in the sense that the goal is
to reduce the harm caused by smoking. They accomplish this in two ways, first,
by providing funds to deal with the associated medical costs and two, by
reducing the number of people who choose to smoke.

Whether you agree with the assessed level of negative externalities or not (I
don't, actually), the tax hasn't "destroyed" anything. Smoking still exists.
Fewer people get sufficient utility from smoking to go on doing so, but that's
the point of the tax in this case. Too many people were smoking previously due
to market inefficiencies. Now the "correct" (again, I believe the
externalities were lower than many people believe they were) number of people
are smoking.

------
greggyb
To me, net neutrality is pretty much a red herring.

I have had good and bad internet service in my life. The least reliable was at
my somewhat rural childhood home from TWC.

The best is my current connection from that most reviled of companies,
Comcast. I have had no service interruptions, and I get a reliable 50Mbps at
all times of day (I check regularly with speed tests and checking Torrent
activity).

The reason my internet service (and customer service experience) has been so
good here is that I have two viable alternative providers, a high speed DSL
carrier offering similar speeds and rates in the city, and a local fiber
provider (recently introduced 10Gbps connection - yes you are reading that
correctly).

While I would prefer to have no rate limiting based on usage or content, I
don't view this as some inalienable right. There is a price I'm willing to pay
for that service, but there is also a price low enough where I'm happy to
accept rate limiting. I'd like to have the choice.

The problem seems to be that the competition which gives me the service I'm
happy with and the regulation regarding whether I am even allowed to reason
about my preferences as in the above paragraph keep getting tied up with one
another.

To me the biggest benefit comes from having multiple options in providers. A
legal monopoly who can't do rate limiting can still give me awful service.
Many providers who can rate limit will most likely give me service I'm happy
with, even if the plan is rate limited.

The history of utility regulation is rife with cases of legally enforced
monopolies.

~~~
zenogais
Unfortunately some things fall into the naturally monopoly category
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly)).
Figuring out what those are is an ongoing process. Government regulated
industries get a bad rap these days - mostly because deregulation has been an
ongoing fad for the last 30 years or so - but a lot of these have great track
records. The California electricity crisis provides an instructive example of
what kinds of effects deregulating an industry that was previously govt
regulated can have - in short, significantly higher prices for badly degraded
service [1]. Many of the proposed fixes are further govt intervention, but
this time in the form of subsidies to businesses rather to incentivize
necessary expansions rather than outright re-acquisition of the industry.

So in short, competition isn't necessarily always good and doesn't always
produce better results. In addition, de-regulated industries aren't
necessarily free from government intervention and are opened up to market
manipulation and exploitation.

[1]:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis)

~~~
rhino369
The problem with the CA power deregulation is that it deregulated wholesale
while keeping retail rates strictly regulated.

Most states have deregulated power and didn't have similar issues.

------
grellas
Law does not operate in a vacuum because, in the end, it is closely tied to
power - to fine, to jail, to sanction, to regulate and restrict - and that
makes it scary when it becomes unhinged from a sense of principle in its
application.

Is it wise, then, to grant unchecked, plenary power over the internet to the
government in the name of trusting that those who currently exercise the
F.C.C.'s power will exercise that power with self-imposed restraint? Lord
Acton's dictum that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely
comes to mind in considering the implications of this step. Once we grant that
the F.C.C. has open-ended authority to do what it wants with the internet,
where is the formal protection against abuse and who will exercise it.
Certainly the courts will not. The Telecommunications Act being relied upon
here certainly grants the formal authority to do this. Those who passed that
Act did so 80 years ago and never contemplated that it would be so applied.
But the courts will say, it was for Congress to make the law and for the
appointed agency to administer it within the bounds laid out by the
legislature, and that means this exercise of authority will be upheld. But so
too will any attempt by the F.C.C. to impose detailed regulations over
pricing, usage, and all sorts of other areas that those who favor a free and
open internet clearly do not desire. Once this step is taken, all formal
protections against abuses of this type are gone. What, then, is the remaining
form of protection. It is that we choose to trust those who exercise open-
ended power to use "restraint." They assure us they would never change the way
things are. They will never succumb to the power and influence of lobbyists.
They will never exercise so vast a power that is given to them without checks
for any corrupt motive. After all, governments worldwide and throughout
history have demonstrated that they can be trusted with unchecked power
without abusing their citizens. And so we can all rest easily knowing that our
benign government is and will always remain in good hands and will always
keeps its promise. After all, who needs the formal protections of the rule of
law when you can give all over to the discretion of leaders who will be
wielding the very powers whose potential abuse we all fear. So, for those who
want net neutrality at any cost, the end justifies the means and any fear in
principle of giving unchecked theoretical power to an unaccountable
governmental agency goes out the window in pursuit of the immediate goal of
net neutrality and in trusting current leaders who tell us that they really
never intend to use all those unchecked powers. I truly hope that is so but I
am very saddened that people never learn the lessons of history about what can
happen when political leaders suddenly find themselves with vast amounts of
unchecked power.

The free internet we know today will be utterly dependent on their good
graces. I for one am not so sanguine as others about where this may lead.

~~~
tw04
Except for the part where ISPs were regulated under Title II up until the late
90s.

>The free internet we know today will be utterly dependent on their good
graces.

That may be the single most uneducated statement about Title II I've seen to
date. What SPECIFICALLY in Title II allows the FCC to restrict what content
the ISPs provide to the public? Hint: there isn't any language whatsoever
giving them that ability.

~~~
tptacek
We were? 90s ISPs regulated by Title II? What? No we weren't.

I started managing ISPs during the dialup era and played shepherd to a field
of Livingston Portmasters. I migrated us to racks upon racks of Ascend boxes
during the 56k modem wars. I set up ISDN PRIs and DS1 terminations. I turned
up our DS3s and set up our first default-free peering. I left just before the
DSLAMs went in.

At no point were we ever subject to Title II regulations. We priced however we
wanted to price, we shaped traffic however we needed to (we virtually never
did that).

~~~
dragonwriter
DSL was covered under Title II until wireline ISPs in general were ruled as an
"information service" rather than a "telecommunication service" by the FCC in
2005 in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling in _NCTA v. Brand X_ upholding
the FCC's earlier (2002) declaratory ruling finding that Cable modem internet
access was an "information service".

See, for instance,
[http://www.techlawjournal.com/topstories/2005/20050805a.asp](http://www.techlawjournal.com/topstories/2005/20050805a.asp)

~~~
tptacek
I'm lost. EnterAct/21stCenturyCable/RCN, the ISP I worked for --- starting as
employee #2 --- wasn't subject to Title II, despite offering DSL service. Is
it possible that this DSL ruling was a wrinkle that affected only ILECs? The
ILECs were, of course, heavily regulated... hence the emergence of the CLEC
market. The upthread comment did not say ILECs; they said "ISPs".

~~~
mrpippy
Yes, pre-2005 the ILECs were required to "offer that wireline broadband
transmission component separately from their Internet service as a stand-alone
service on a common-carrier basis"
[https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-260433A1.p...](https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-260433A1.pdf)

In addition, back in the dial-up days, how did your customers connect to those
modems? Through their Title II regulated POTS service.

~~~
tptacek
Sure, but we as the ISP were free to shape traffic, establish arbitrary fee
structures, and charge for specific uses of the Internet despite the fact that
we made use of Title II regulated phone company PRIs.

I'm not saying that Title II didn't exist in the 1990s. It just didn't govern
ISPs.

------
DanielBMarkham
As a libertarian who knows tech, I'm on the government's side here, although
I'm grimacing while I'm supporting them. It's simply the lesser of two evils.

One thing to help clarify the debate if you're talking to somebody who opposes
this move: do not confuse the issue of how the government should be treating
utilities in general with whether or not the internet _is_ a utility. We can
have a grand old time debating the overreach of a regulatory statist society,
but that has got jack squat to do with the issue at hand. Is the internet more
like electricity, where you pay so much for a bucketful, and then you can do
whatever you want with it? Or is it more like Star Wars, where George Lucas
and Disney can charge us 17 times at 17 different rates for different versions
of what is essentially the same thing? These are two different discussions to
be had; do not let folks conflate them into one.

~~~
ancap
>As a libertarian who knows tech, I'm on the government's side here

That's an oxymoron.

The core reason internet service sucks for the vast majority of Americans is
because state and local governments grant monopoly status to the ISP cartels.
This move by the FCC does nothing to remedy that and consequently will not
solve the problem. If they require higher "standard" of internet without doing
away with the monopolies, for the vast majority of people this will only mean
a higher bill.

~~~
cbd1984
Do you think there is any such thing as a natural monopoly?

Do you think the cost inherent in laying cables makes the entity that owns the
cables a natural monopoly?

~~~
ancap
>Do you think there is any such thing as a natural monopoly?

I am not aware of any.

>Do you think the cost inherent in laying cables makes the entity that owns
the cables a natural monopoly?

No, otherwise the "natural monopoly" existed before the first company ever
laid cables.

~~~
cbd1984
>> Do you think there is any such thing as a natural monopoly?

> I am not aware of any.

I think, judging by your username (ancap), you are philosophically opposed to
the concept, because the existence of natural monopolies would represent a
failure of the pure free market capitalism you promote.

I doubt I will convince you, and I doubt anyone else here needs to be
convinced that natural monopolies exist.

>> Do you think the cost inherent in laying cables makes the entity that owns
the cables a natural monopoly?

> No, otherwise the "natural monopoly" existed before the first company ever
> laid cables.

This simply does not make sense, which is further evidence that you're opposed
to the concept. The high fixed costs of the laying of the cables relative to
the small marginal cost of adding a new subscriber once cables have been laid
is what _creates_ a natural monopoly in this context. The massive economies of
scale which are only available to the company which already has the cables
laid make it infeasible for a new company to lay its own cables; that's how a
natural monopoly is enforced.

Therefore, it's nonsense to imagine the monopoly existed before the cable was
laid.

~~~
ancap
>I doubt I will convince you, and I doubt anyone else here needs to be
convinced that natural monopolies exist.

You won't even try to provide an example? Perhaps it is not I who is
"philosophically opposed to the concept".

>This simply does not make sense, which is further evidence that you're
opposed to the concept. The high fixed costs of the laying of the cables
relative to the small marginal cost of adding a new subscriber once cables
have been laid is what creates a natural monopoly in this context. The massive
economies of scale which are only available to the company which already has
the cables laid make it infeasible for a new company to lay its own cables;
that's how a natural monopoly is enforced.

You asked whether the cost of laying cables makes a company a monopoly. The
question itself demonstrates "nonsense". If the cost of laying cables is an
inhibiting factor for the first company, then it is also the inhibiting factor
for any companies which follow. The cost of adding new subscribers is
irrelevant. If the first company is not meeting the demands of the customer
then the conditions are ripe for a competitor.

~~~
aninhumer
>You won't even try to provide an example?

Well since we don't actually live in an anarcho-capitalist "utopia",
governments tend to intervene sooner or later in dysfunctional markets. And I
find that regardless of how bad things were beforehand, or how light the
resulting regulation, the response from AnCaps is always "You touched it, you
bought it!"

Nonetheless, the history of Standard Oil is a pretty compelling example of a
natural monopoly.

>If the cost of laying cables is an inhibiting factor for the first company,
then it is also the inhibiting factor for any companies which follow.

The difference is the potential ROI for each market entrant.

For the first company, the entry cost may be high, but since there'll be no
competition, there's potential for decent profits.

The second company faces the same entry cost, but they also have to compete
with the first company, so their potential profits are much lower.

As a result, those who might disrupt the market are much more likely to invest
elsewhere.

~~~
ancap
>And I find that regardless of how bad things were beforehand, or how light
the resulting regulation, the response from AnCaps is always "You touched it,
you bought it!"

I'm not even sure what that means.

>Nonetheless, the history of Standard Oil is a pretty compelling example of a
natural monopoly.

I'd wager that what you think you know about Standard Oil is probably mythical
and not based on historical fact.

>For the first company, the entry cost may be high, but since there'll be no
competition, there's potential for decent profits. >The second company faces
the same entry cost, but they also have to compete with the first company, so
their potential profits are much lower.

And yet I know of cities which have half a dozen ISPs (none of them publicly
owned). As I said previously if the existing company/ies are not satisfying
customers, then there is room for competition. The second [or third, or
fourth...] need not even compete on the same scale as the existing ISP[s]. A
local entrepreneur seeing the need, could just wire up his neighborhood. I
know of cases where this has happened.

------
djrogers
Setting aside the ultimate politics and ramifications of this, it is
interesting (and kind of scary) to watch the fight between a non-elected
bureaucracy and our elected house of representatives to regulate the internet.

Congress seems to be completely incapable of doing more than grandstanding,
while the bureaucrats may wind up dramatically increasing their own power with
a single stroke of their unelected pens.

It's no wonder we have many times more regulations than laws in this
country... If I got to 'regulate' who I had power over on a regular basis,
there are a lot of people who would suddenly find themselves inexplicably
under Title Darren. Human nature.

~~~
skywhopper
It's worth noting that these "unelected bureaucrats" are nominated by a
President for limited terms and confirmed by the Senate, and that all powers
they have are bestowed upon them by Congress and can be revoked, and that
their regulations have to fit within restrictions that are defined and may be
revised by Congress.

It's certainly not pretty, but it's not unaccountable, and it seems to be
moving things in the generally correct direction. We can hope, anyway.

~~~
djrogers
>> their regulations have to fit within restrictions that are defined and may
be revised by Congress

This is only notionally true, and history is replete with examples of federal
agencies declaring their own authority over things which were obviously not
envisioned so. While congress could act to change that, they don't, so power
collects.

~~~
chc
That's usually because Congress doesn't object. You may as well say Congress
is unaccountable because of public apathy.

~~~
pc86
They largely are. Congress has what, a 93% re-election rate?

~~~
dragonwriter
That's because of (1) limited real choices (yay FPTP elections) and (2) most
people are negative about Congress, but that's mostly about the members of
Congress that don't represent _them_ ; people tend to have a lot higher
support for _their_ members of Congress (in both Houses) than for Congress as
a whole.

------
dkhenry
I understand the desire to regulate the internet as a utility, but are they
going to actually regulate it like a utility or are they going to call it a
common carrier and then just make up a few BS rules that need to be followed.

I have a sinking feeling that all this will result in is a situation where
monopolies are given out to the existing players and no one is forced to do
anything to upgrade the existing service.

This isn't like a water utility where the product has little variance. Even
now in the marketplace there is huge variance in the quality of the product I
can buy ( I am one of the lucky few with choices of providers ). I have a
feeling my area is just going to get given a blanket monopoly to Comcast and I
will have to deal with a crappy connection forever with no hope of another
company ever gaining traction to replace them.

~~~
skylan_q
_I have a sinking feeling that all this will result in is a situation where
monopolies are given out to the existing players and no one is forced to do
anything to upgrade the existing service._

It's naive to think it would be anything but this. We like the Internet as it
is today but for some reason we need to have the FCC control it in order to
try to keep it the way it is.

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
>We like the Internet as it is today

Who likes the way things are? I'd like it a lot better if it was more like in
Japan, Korea, Latvia, Hungary, Finland, Sweden, France, ...etc.

~~~
adventured
Serious question - how do the median consumer bandwidth speeds in the US
compare to France?

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
According to [this]([http://dailyinfographic.com/wp-
content/uploads/2011/02/the-b...](http://dailyinfographic.com/wp-
content/uploads/2011/02/the-beauty-of-infographics.jpeg)) France is faster by
a large margin.

------
TheHypnotist
One part of me hates this because the idea of our government dipping their
hands into what has become the major source of information, entertainment,
conducting business, etc. is quite scary. We all know their tendency to fuck
things up because of politics, money, stupidity, or a combination of any and
all of these.

On the other hand, I look at my other utilities and realize I have absolutely
no complaints. Yeah, the power goes out from time to time, but that is just an
inconvenience. As it stands, my internet is just as reliable as my power in
terms of outages (not including the occasional speed fluctuation).

As long as it doesn't turn into a pay for use type deal and sticks with the
current model of pay for bandwidth I suppose I'd be ok with this. There are
just too many different moving parts for the cynical and rational parts of my
brain to agree on.

Edit: Oh, and as long as censorship never becomes a thing.

~~~
jchendy
I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm honestly curious: why is pay-for-use bad for
internet access but okay for water, electricity, and phone?

~~~
WillPostForFood
Pay for use for water and electricity is good because the resources are
finite, and you want to conserve them. The advantage of unlimited internet use
is it promotes the creation of services that need more bandwidth.

~~~
jchendy
Isn't network usage also finite? I.e. wouldn't there be issues if every device
connected to an ISP simultaneously tried to stream large data?

~~~
adventured
There's a clear difference between these resources.

If you could use 100 times more electricity and water at the same cost (with
no damage to the environment), would you? We might find uses for doing that,
if those resources weren't relatively scarce.

If you give an _average_ consumer a 10tb hard drive, will they use it all?
Probably not even close. The amount of storage wasted by consumers is beyond
epic, thrown away with the next system upgrade (someone want to count how much
storage America has thrown away in the last decade?). That's the bandwidth
context. We can keep boosting the amount of bandwidth for an exceptionally
long time, at little additional cost over what the present infrastructure
cost. You can go from 100mbps to 200mbps while not having to rebuild
everything. Try doubling the output of or availability of water or electricity
like that.

Put another way, bandwidth - like storage or processing power - is a hyper
expanding resource; one in which we can even expand just by being clever while
using most of the existing infrastructure. Water and electricity are nothing
like that.

Humans could easily consume all the fresh water on this planet. We can expand
storage, bandwidth and processing power to such an extent that we can never
saturate the total capacity. In fact, in the first world, that has already
mostly occurred for consumers with storage and processing power (and for the
radical majority of all server side use cases). Will 99.99% of all web sites
ever need a 1gbps pipe? Nope, and they also won't need 1tb of storage, or 64gb
of ram, or a 16 core modern Xeon processor. Those sites will never have enough
content to consume such resources, and certainly not in the next decade.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
The waste is less, if you weight storage by performance or energy efficiency.
Then, we're throwing away low-yield storage and replacing it with high-octane
storage. The 'waste factor' becomes small.

Also consider most discarded storage is a fraction of the size of what it is
replaced by. So the fraction of waste is always small (compared to its
absolute value).

~~~
adventured
Right, and that's another way in which bandwidth, storage and processing power
as resources have absolutely nothing in common with water or electricity. The
ability to waste exponentially greater amounts each generation.

Do I _need_ to watch a late night talk show at 1080 on YouTube instead of 720?
No, it has only modest impact on my experience, but I do it anyway because
there's no cost associated to doing so. I can freely waste vast amounts of
bandwidth (or storage, or processing power) with minimum concern, rather than
focusing on conservation.

My phone is another marvel in that regard. It costs $0.50 per year in
electricity, about 1% to 2% of what my desktop PC consumes. I can waste my
phone's resources freely with very minimum concerns for the environment,
especially relative to most other things in my house or life that use
electricity.

Water and electricity will never have these properties. It's unlikely the
average person will ever be able to waste vast amounts of either without
concern.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
I'm not sure its meaningful to even talk about 'wasting bandwidth'. The cable
is doing something all the time - whether or not your meaningful bits are
travelling over the wire. So its imaginary to say 'now the cable is in use'
and 'now the cable is being wasted' \- its only a different state to a human
mind, not to the universe.

------
CurtHagenlocher
What a coincidence; I just posted this to my Facebook feed yesterday:

Dealing with ISPs (and mobile providers, for that matter) is a never-ending
hell of time-sucking and abysmal customer service. Communications as a
business has some unfortunate features that drive its pathologies. The
overhead of the infrastructure is very high and the marginal cost for adding a
customer is relatively low. When there's more than one option, there's very
little practical difference to distinguish the competitors from each other.
Whether it's wireless or wired, I suspect we're doomed to be subjected to this
kind of bullshit until the businesses in question are treated and regulated as
the basic utilities that they have become. I don't know anyone who's
frustrated with their electrical or gas service.

~~~
djrogers
Wait a second, every single negative you've described here can also be applied
to other utilities who have been regulated under title II for as long as it's
existed. They've yet to find a way to 'regulate' human decency and good
customer service...

~~~
lightbritefight
Adding viable competitors is how.

Title 2 will make it so other companies have a chance to exist on the
government sponsored lines. Once Comcast sees its lifeblood spilling into the
streets, Im betting their CS will be as sweet as pecan pie.

~~~
rhino369
Title II can't force Comcast to share their lines. It can only force ILEC's to
share their lines. So Verizon, AT&T, CenturyLink, and Frontier could be forced
to unbundle.

But Comcast can't be.

~~~
wtallis
Can't Comcast be treated as a comparable carrier under section 251(h)(2) and
thus also qualify as an ILEC?

------
kyrra
Does anyone know if this would impact the issues we saw between Netflix,
Level3 and Verizon? My understanding of the original issues with Netflix and
Verizon was that the interconnect between Netflix's peering company (Level 3)
and Verizon wasn't big enough to handle the bandwidth that Netflix was
attempting to pump out.

In this case, Verizon was just refusing to upgrade that path and wanted to
force Netflix to connect with them directly (get them to pay more money in
some way.

Is that the general problem Netflix had with Verizon? If so, how would Title
II help this situation? Does Title II require these various companies to
maintain the interconnects between their networks and other companies out
there?

~~~
spinlock
I wish I had a link to review this but I don't think that's the case. As I
recall, Netflix published data showing that there wasn't actually a bandwidth
problem and they offered to upgrade the equipment. They've ended up paying
Verizon which is what verizon was really after.

~~~
kyrra
Level3 had a number of blog posts under the "open internet" category about
their view of it. I believe this is the post where I gleaned the information
from[0].

[0] [http://blog.level3.com/open-internet/verizons-accidental-
mea...](http://blog.level3.com/open-internet/verizons-accidental-mea-culpa/)

------
Zigurd
That's a peculiar choice of word for an article title. The FCC can't "regulate
the Internet." The FCC can regulate service providers in the US in certain
limited ways.

~~~
skylan_q
They're not changing what the Internet is, only how it's provided.

They don't realize the way that the Internet is provided is the essence of the
Internet itself.

------
nitinics
I wonder if autonomous local mesh networks and hyper local mesh networks which
is essentially a network of networks would fall under the term "Internet" and
under these regulations. That would certainly stop innovation on that front
(?)

------
supergeek133
I get what they're trying to accomplish, we all want faster more reliable
service, but as comparison is anyone 100% happy with their utility (power,
water, etc)?

That's where this is headed.

~~~
amputect
My tap water is clean and delicious and I have never, ever had a problem with
it. I have never experienced an unscheduled service interruption with my
water, and scheduled service interruptions are very rare and advertised well
in advance.

My electricity is stable and reliable, and any power outages I've experienced
have been brief, and exclusively due to exceptional weather events.

I'm also a Comcast customer, and I would say that I have some sort of partial
or total service interruption (internet is completely gone, or set top box
stops working) on average, once every other week or so. These outages are
usually relatively brief (a few minutes), but at least once a year I lose one
or both services for 6 hours or more. Plus the internet speed varies wildly
from "high-end dialup modem" at the low end, to "significantly less than the
advertised value" at the high end. Needless to say, I have never actually
experienced the advertised speeds.

If I got the same service from my utilities as I did from Comcast, I would end
up brushing my teeth with raw sewage about once a month, and trying to toast
bread would occasionally cause a power dip that would brown-out every other
outlet in my house. I probably wouldn't be able to shower some nights because
the cold water pressure would be unusably low, and I would have to reset every
clock in my house a couple times a month. The one similarity is that I would
still be unable to shop around for better service, because Comcast is the only
option in my area.

If you want a TLDR, it's that I would figuratively kill to get Internet
service that's even just half as good as my utility service, because right now
my internet service is much worse than that.

~~~
cheald
Comparing Title II utilities to water and electricity is silly. How happy are
you with your landline telephone and cable TV services? You know, the ones
that everyone hates and is replacing with internet-carried alternatives?

~~~
chronomex
My landline telephone is very satisfactory. I've never encountered any service
disruptions with it. In fact, I can't think of a single time in my entire life
where I've picked up the phone and not had a usable dialtone on the other end,
or where I've placed a call (to another landline) and received a bad
connection.

The single time I had a problem with how it was billed, I called the state
regulator who worked with my telco to sort out how taxes were being
calculated. It turned out that they were billing me correctly, but couldn't
explain it over the phone.

~~~
cheald
My problem with my landline is price ($35/mo to start) and features
(practically non-existent, with huge premiums charged for useful things). The
service effectively hasn't changed since the 1980s, while the prices have
steadily risen.

I replaced my landline with an Ooma (a VOIP phone which let me port my old
landline number) which sounds WORLDS better, lets me manage personal
blocklists, aggregates community blocklists to automatically filter incoming
calls from telemarketers, political parties, etc, sends voicemails to my
email, integrates with Google Voice, can ring on multiple phones or devices,
and other such things. It's in a completely different class of service, and it
costs a fraction of what my competing local offerings do.

~~~
falcolas
> It's in a completely different class of service, and it costs a fraction of
> what my competing local offerings do.

However, your VOIP will not work during a power outage, during an internet
outage, or any other time the VOIP company's servers are down.

Landlines work during power outages, during internet outages, and they provide
around 5 nines of uptime (that's less than 6 minutes of downtime a year).

Those are the things your $35 a month buys you. How important that reliability
is to you generally depends on your health. I know more than a few folks who
would never give up their landline, because they have medical conditions which
depend on reliable access to 911.

~~~
cheald
The landline option I had previously was serviced by my cable company. If my
internet was out, so was my landline, despite it _not_ being VOIP. At my
previous residence, it was serviced by the local phone company, and ran
through a multiplexing box which plugged into my house power. Both that option
and my cable modem have battery backups which continue to function in a power
outage, but once that's gone, no more service.

That leaves only VOIP provider outages as a concern, and I've yet to
experience one of those in a few years.

------
zkhalique
The real solution to all this is more competition. Stop the states from suing
cities to prevent them from implementing municipal fiber. Open up the field to
companies like Google to come in and partner with cities who can provide the
last mile, competing with businesses. Even libertarians should say, "well, a
city is a large organization and a giant corporation is a large organization,
and both are kind of monopolies at this point..."

------
bpodgursky
Probably way too late to get noticed here, but while I think the THREAT of
Title II might be useful to keep ISPs in line, it would be a pretty rash move
to actually reclassify broadband.

The US has painfully little competition in most areas, there is no debate
about that. But new technology has been fixing that, albeit slowly, via
increasingly expansive and competitive 4G, Satellite, and even improvements in
moving data across copper wires or existing phone lines (not going to get you
100mb service, but quite plausibly "good enough" that you can realistically
threaten Comcast with quitting service.)

I don't want to get in a libertarian vs flame war, but the fact is, it is far
easier to regulate than deregulate when it becomes unnecessary. If the non-
competitive market we have now is an artifact of old technology and
installation costs, it would be a mistake to set up a regulatory infastructure
we won't be able to roll back.

------
twoodfin
Wheeler is apparently basing the 'light touch' Title II regulation on similar
regulations applied to mobile video (but not mobile data). Does anyone have
some examples of the applications of mobile video being so regulated (The
YouTube app on my phone? Probably not?) the kinds of regulations imposed and
what the results have been?

------
cubano
I think the radio analogy is spot on, and I really believe that the endgame to
all this government interest may very well be the same sort of regulatory
control that the FCC now imposes in radio stations and content via the [1]
Communications Act of 1934.

This can easily been seen as a power grab by plutocrats who want to start
filtering and controlling the money making and informational aspect of the
web, and while I am, of course, speculating about this outcome, I think in
general, it has been on the back burner for years.

You know, to protect the children and all that FUD.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Act_of_1934](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Act_of_1934)

~~~
unprepare
To me there seems to be a distinct difference between actively broadcasting a
signal(radio) and allowing access to those who request it(internet)

Radio works by beaming signals all over their coverage area. those signals are
pushed to everyone. Whereas, a website isn't just sending its html to every IP
and port it can find, it waits for a request and responds accordingly.

This seems to be a fundamental distinction to me, but one that would likely be
easily obscured by politicking and misinformation campaigns if that were the
ultimate goal.

Interesting thought though, as we do see the UK beginning to move towards this
more hands-on internet regulation all of a suddden

~~~
cubano
_To me there seems to be a distinct difference between actively broadcasting a
signal(radio) and allowing access to those who request it(internet)_

Now, that's a very good point, but can't the very act of turning a radio dial
be the 1930's equivalence of typing in a URI or clicking a link?

Wired magazine published an article in the 90's about the parallels between
radio and the "new" internet, and it was filled with direct analogies between
the two and how governments eventually took control and started regulating
licenses and content, for the most part.

I am unable to find a link to that long article, but the ideas contained in it
have stuck with me for a long time.

------
sparklepoof
Contrarians... gotta love em. They keep the running Looney Tunes reverse-
psychology joke going. Counter-cultures are no different than the trend-
following cultures they try to polarize themselves from. I guess I shouldn't
have been shocked into commenting on this one for the oddly negative responses
from some, but I do believe that the formulation of that negativity demands
some more research. Has the internet created a society full of contrarian
trolls bent on using sheer will to overcomplicate simple subjects?

------
dmfdmf
I am concerned about the implications for free speech. And I don't mean the
freedom to say whatever I want as long as the FCC approves or that I don't
piss off a large enough political constituency. If I start a blog to post
pictures of Alah am I going to be shut down? What about forums that discuss
illegal drug use? How long till the FBI, DEA, etc. petition the FCC to shut
these sites down? What about sites like reddit that carry porn, post pictures
of Alah AND discuss illegal drug use? I don't care about these sites but I do
care about their right to run these forums and the participants right to
discuss any issue openly, even socially unacceptable ideas.

Free speech is a political principle but people pay lip service to it because
they don't understand it and how important it is to a free society. If FCC
starts to regulate speech on the internet (i.e. actual censorship which only
the government can practice) by defining acceptable content and shutting down
websites for so-called "hate speech", requiring a government "blog" license,
etc. then it is game over for our freedoms and the future of the country.

~~~
warfangle
Huh? Which part of the telecommunications act gives the FCC that power, that
has not been struck down by the courts?

~~~
dmfdmf
You can't see past your nose I guess.

------
cplease
The HN title is wrong and misleading. The NYT headline is "In Net Neutrality
Push, F.C.C. Is Expected to Propose Regulating Internet Service as a Utility".

That's a little different than "FCC regulating the Internet." ISPs provide
internet endpoints to consumers. They should be utilities.

------
mdev
"Today, 55 percent of online traffic happens on smartphones and tablets,
according to the F.C.C.." I did not know this, it's surprising for me. Mobile-
first approaches makes a lot more sense now.

------
jeffdavis
What could possibly go wrong?

Fears about big companies are legitimate. I just fear what the FCC might do a
lot more.

It all seems fine now, but the benevolent regulators in charge now might be
replaced by less-benevolent ones later.

------
vandeaq
The net becomes a utility (and ISPs utility providers), and every breach,
exploit, or unprotected private data leak becomes a terrorist action at
prosecutorial discretion.

Something to think about.

------
joshontheweb
Will any of this matter once the global satellite internet networks come into
being. SpaceX and o3b are aggressively working on these it seems.

------
Selfcommit
I suspect the conversations in this thread will be extremely interesting 5
years from now - should this regulation come to pass.

------
coldcode
Now we find out who has the deepest pockets.

~~~
robotnoises
Isn't that always the case, though?

~~~
coldcode
Sadly, yes.

------
wsloth514
Is anyone else here afraid of this little word called, "regulate"? Maybe I am
being naive.

~~~
shmerl
One should be afraid of the word unregulated, as in monopoly.

~~~
ancap
"unregulated" does not mean monopoly. In fact, in all cases, monopolies are
only possible through government force (ie. regulation).

~~~
shmerl
_> "unregulated" does not mean monopoly._

No, but when unregulated happens to be a monopoly, you have a major major
problem. Exactly what happens in many areas with big ISPs.

It's not like there is no antitrust law, but no one seems to care about it and
monopolists simply get away with ignoring it left and right.

------
paulhauggis
How is complete government regulation equivalent to a "free and open
Internet"?

Everyone seems to think that this will just be exactly what we have now, but
with more freedom and options. I don't think this will be the case.

It will open the door for any future governments to start regulating things
like freedom of speech.

------
droopybuns
Netflix traffic and some hypothetical future tech like Surgery-over-IP traffic
should not be prioritized equally.

~~~
bequanna
Yes they should.

Usually, I don't like making the 'slippery slope' argument, but it is quite
appropriate here.

The dangers are real. We can allow nothing less than forcing IPSs to maintain
complete neutrality on traffic type.

In your scenario, an ISP will determine that an organization is using their
internet connection for this high-priority operation. The ISP then realizes
that they can essentially extort the surgeon/hospital.

This is a mafia-like protection scam. "Don't want to pay up? Gee, it sure
would be terrible if that internet connection of yours was to drop out at the
wrong time."

Don't think this scenario is possible? I would argue it is probable.

~~~
droopybuns
You pay to guarantee availability. The urgency of netflix is not equivalent to
a surgery. The netflix traffic is a threat to the surgery traffic.

The ISP doesn't extort- the customer pays for service guarantees. This is
already what happens today in MPLS vpns.

Savvy technologists are going to demand guarantees that other tenants can't
disrupt their service.

This is in no way a mafia-like protection scam. There is a certain allotment
of bandwidth available at any given time at any given link. You can allow for
reservations so that some tenants cannot encroach upon your guaranteed
bandwidth for that link. This shit is already happening all the time on amazon
aws, azure, google app engine, etc. These are not new concepts.

Mafia protection is- pay us or we take you down. What I'm describing is- you
pay so that a netflix premier doesn't disrupt your service.

I'm having a hard time understanding how you can feel a service like
cloudflare is not mafia-like protection.

~~~
bequanna
Cloudflare is opt-in.

In my scenario, the ISP purposely degrades the service unless you pay more.
This isn't hypothetical as it has been proven they did/do to Netflix traffic.

Cloudflare isn't going to DDoS every site that doesn't sign up for their
service.

The value of doing surgery successfully via the internet is high. Are you
really that naive that you don't think ISPs will attempt to capture as much of
that value as they possibly can?

Do you want to live in a world where an ISP determines the worth of your
internet traffic and attempts to bill you based on the content, not the actual
bandwidth used?

------
thissideup
Yeah the government's goal is totally a "free and open Internet."

Except that part of the government dedicated to vacuuming up and storing and
analyzing every signal from every network-enabled device on the planet.

~~~
ceejayoz
That has nothing to do with whether or not it's a utility. They're clearly
already capable of doing so.

~~~
thissideup
Explain how the two ideas aren't related.

~~~
metaphorm
that's not how this works. you're the one that made the original
unsubstantiated claim. the burden is now on you to substantiate your original
claim.

explain the mechanism by which classifying internet service as a utility
enhances the ability of the NSA to record that data.

~~~
rabbyte
Public safety and homeland security are primary functions of the FCC. When
government decides to censor, surveil, or manipulate information in the future
it seems likely it will be instrumented through the FCC as that relationship
was used to do the same for radio and television in the past.

------
IanDrake
That will be a sad day. Internet technology still has a lot of room to improve
before the government steps in and kills all market forces that encourage
those improvements.

If you don't like your current service levels now, just wait until the
government gets involved.

~~~
IanDrake
I realize HN is full of idealistic kids who never lived through the government
taking control of something to "improve" it, so your down votes are forgiven.

~~~
wmf
Whether you're right or not, your point is shallow and tired. But I guess the
"groundhog day" nature of HN resetting every discussion to zero every day
encourages such comments.

------
higherpurpose
Wait, doesn't calling the Internet a utility mean all data will be metered by
the MB from now on? Or does that not apply here? If it does, wouldn't that
give carriers _exactly_ what they wanted - the ability to charge video
providers much more than they would say a news website?

The idea behind the whole net neutrality movement was to have "all you can eat
plans" where all data is treated the same. What if now we get the "all data is
treated the same" part, but not the "all you can eat" one?

Another issue: government spying. I know the ISP's/carriers have given the
government virtually everything they've asked for, including direct access to
the cables for the plain-text data + the recent cookie tracking inserted into
people's traffic, but some of them have refused to do much of it, like Sonic,
and I think Google takes a similar approach, fighting for users' rights, even
if Verizon and AT&T do not. So what does it mean now that the government
classifies all Internet under Title 2. What can we expect in terms of
surveillance? And does it make it much easier to force _all_ ISP's to comply
with certain surveillance requests?

~~~
Amezarak
> Wait, doesn't calling the Internet a utility mean all data will be metered
> by the MB from now on? Or does that not apply here?

No, it does not mean metered Internet, which is already increasingly common in
the US - though usually in the form of x GB for $y, with $z/GB overages. This
has actually become incredibly common. There isn't a single ISP in my state
that doesn't have data caps with metered Internet thereafter, or, in the case
of my ISP, mandatory upgrades (though even then, the most expensive plan has a
cap of 1TB.)

> So what does it mean now that the government classifies all Internet under
> Title 2. What can we expect in terms of surveillance?

Nothing changes.

