
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler’s lame excuses for his net neutrality proposal - Libertatea
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/05/fcc_chairman_tom_wheeler_s_lame_excuses_for_his_net_neutrality_proposal.html
======
parfe
Wheeler created a legacy dystopian novelists only dream about. The article
uses netlfix vs amazon for their exclusive example but the true issue is news.

Millions of customers limited to seeing video from one news network. Fox news
or CNN or MSNBC. Or one newspaper's video service. Suddenly instead of
streaming NY Times you can only reliably view the Washington times or the NY
post.

And forget about non profit or advocacy sites competing for mind share against
large companies who can get their content delivered with high quality and
reliably unbuffered.

~~~
chimeracoder
This is what concerns me about the public debate surrounding the proposed
Comcast/Time Warner merger. Look at the coverage that MSNBC (owned by Comcast)
has devoted to the issue, for example[0][1].

Having news agencies very tightly coupled with (and owned by) companies that
are lobbying for major policy changes to basic infrastructure and utilities[2]
is a recipe for disaster.

[0] [http://www.fair.org/blog/2014/04/14/something-you-still-
wont...](http://www.fair.org/blog/2014/04/14/something-you-still-wont-see-on-
msnbc/)

[1] [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-abrams/msnbcs-big-fail-
de...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-abrams/msnbcs-big-fail-
deafening_b_5189126.html)

[2] Yes, I consider the Internet in 2014 to be a basic utility, even if the
FCC does not agree (yet).

------
tim333
"We can't have a situation in which the corporate duopoly dictates the future
of the internet and that's why I'm supporting what is called net neutrality."
\- Barak Obama, 2006

Apparently Obama has the power to replace Wheeler as chairman and I wish he
would.

------
twoodfin
I hate to give such a short take, but any article about "net neutrality" that
doesn't use the words "video" or "streaming" once isn't a serious discussion.
"NetFlix" appears one time. The repeated use of "website" seems intended to
mislead casual readers about what, exactly, is being debated. Slow banner ads
for poor nuns? C'mon.

Any real resolution of this issue has to involve either forcing the cable
companies to be dumb pipes and somehow figuring out how that will still
incentivize anyone to build out infrastructure, or allowing companies
representing 1/3 of primetime traffic to come to negotiated agreements with
companies representing 1/3 of primetime viewers.

~~~
mgkimsal
Yeah - 'dump pipes' \- that was a phrase I was looking for. My water company
just pumps water to my house. That's it. It's a commodity service. Major
content companies also owning and managing the information pipes seems as bad
an idea as having Monsanto or General Mills own and manage my local water
infrastructure, no?

~~~
twoodfin
But you don't want new pipes that can deliver twice as much water every few
years.

~~~
revelation
No end customer has gotten any new pipes, certainly not at the rate Moore has
provided for the ISPs. For them, networking equipment has gotten considerably
faster, cheaper and easier to manage.

The technology is certainly not the issue here. The entrenched monopolies have
all but guaranteed nothing happened in the last mile for 10+ years while their
job got easier.

Just take a look around. There are very very few places in the world where you
can get 100 MBit (and use it for more than a minute). This was the height of
bandwidth technology _in 1995_. Today, 10GBit is the jellybean standard in
networking gear.

~~~
crazy1van
I think there is too much emphasis on the last mile speeds. I see complaints
all the time that other countries have 100mbit links to the home whereas the
USA is stuck with 5-10mbit. Personally, I have 25mbit down and Fios is always
trying to upsell me to 50. However, I never get those speeds to real internet
sites. Sure, my speedtest comes in right at 25mbit.

------
wtmcc
> The only real restriction is that fast lanes can’t be offered exclusively to
> a company also owned by the cable or phone company.

This fast lane already exists, and it exists _for the cable company itself_.

E.g. Comcast’s digital television (including Netflix-rivaling “Xfinity” on-
demand service) is delivered over bandwidth that is dedicated/statically
allocated to serving their entertainment package.

Worse still, Comcast’s data also has a dedicated backhaul. Live TV is
collected from satellite feeds at a local “headend” facility, and on-demand
content is likely cached close to the user à la Netflix Open Connect.

------
snarfy
"We've excluded lobbyists from policymaking jobs." \- Barak Obama

------
mgkimsal
I've tried to follow this on and off for a while, but I don't understand what
the justification is. We have a current system in place, and now we're under
constant pressure to pass some new legislation to address a problem that
doesn't seem to exist (certainly not for millions/billions of end users).

~~~
wpietri
I'm not sure which side you think needs justification, but a brief background:

The Internet started as a collection of small academic networks. Eventually,
commercial providers joined in. Through a system of peering [1], we got global
reachability: everybody could talk to everybody. In practice we generally had
network neutrality [2], where everybody's packets were treated fairly. This
happened because there were many internet service providers, and any one of
them thinking about being a greedy dick would have to consider that they were
substantially outnumbered. And they'd also have to worry about customers
switching to competitors.

But now the US internet market has collapsed to a small number of players.
Most people have little or no choice. And the remaining players are either a)
very large, or b) commercially irrelevant. So the incentives are different.
Comcast sees a lot of money being made by Netflix and resents it. So they are
basically threatening to make Netflix's service worse unless they get paid
more. And they want to be able to do that to anybody who makes a lot of money
over the Internet.

That was previously prevented by the FCC, but no longer, because the head of
it used to work for the cable companies. Comcast's remaining competitors
aren't going to complain; the big ones see a great opportunity for a similar
shakedown racket. Consumers can't do anything, because they often can't
switch, and if they could it's generally to some other giant.

So basically, the old system did work fine, it is breaking down. What almost
everybody wants is to formalize the old approach, network neutrality. But
Comcast, et al, have an enormous amount of money and long experience at
manipulating governments, and they currently appear to be winning.

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

[2]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality)

~~~
mgkimsal
Thank you. I haven't seen it presented quite this succinctly, and I'm more
looking at things over the past 20 years. Things work pretty good. Legislation
to try to keep it that way would be good. But the legislation we seem to be
seeing codifies the new way. Again, I'm likely glossing over some big bits
I've not seen yet - I'll go read up some more.

------
lawnchair_larry
The new FCC chairman, Tom Wheeler, was previously a telecom VC, lobbyist, and
industry association chief. He's actually in the "Cable Television Hall of
Fame". His fortune previously depended on influencing the FCC. Now he's in
charge of it.

Make no mistake, this guy has one job. He's going to do whatever he can to
break net neutrality.

Oh, he also donated (via bundling) over 500k to Obama, who appointed him
(nobody knows how much more than 500k, because the disclosure requirement is
just "over 500k"). Obama also campaigned both on not hiring lobbyists, as well
as net neutrality.

------
higherpurpose
> Wheeler suggests that the “unreasonable discrimination” rule would be flimsy
> and could lead to abuse.

Oh, but "commercially reasonable rates" isn't a flimsy rule that could lead to
abuse? This actually exposes the sham Wheeler has orchestrated. If one is
flimsy, then so is the other, and he seems to understand both are flimsy, but
he protects his commercially reasonable rate rule, while fights against the
unreasonable discrimination one, because he thinks the latter may actually be
_less_ flimsy than the former, and he knows carriers wouldn't like that. So he
doesn't want people to start pushing for that one instead.

That's not the only way to bring net neutrality, though. Reclassifying ISPs
are common carriers would do that, too, and I think it would also be much
easier to have small ISPs come and use Comcast or whoever's cables, and
therefore more competition, too. Two birds with one stone.

------
smokeyj
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_problem](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_problem)

It seems to me we need a technical solution to a political problem.

------
mercurial
Reading that, I'm really happy the EU Telecom package made it through with net
neutrality intact.

------
puppetmaster3
Here is his bio:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Wheeler_(lobbyist)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Wheeler_\(lobbyist\))

Find the key word there, no need for more info.

------
Intermernet
"The chairman and the professors argue that the only alternative to allowing
paid fast lanes and slow lanes is some rule against “unreasonable
discrimination.” Wheeler suggests that the “unreasonable discrimination” rule
would be flimsy and could lead to abuse."

Isn't this the same argument as the one people are using against this law
change?

Isn't eradicating "unreasonable discrimination" the primary purpose of net
neutrality?

