US House or Reps REJECTS net neutrality

[The Last Conformist]

I thought you were an electronic engineer?

My master's is in technical physics and electrical engineering, but I'm focusing on the physics side. The closest thing to telecommunications systems I've worked with is oscilliators for mobile units.

 

[IglooDame]

My master's is in technical physics and electrical engineering, but I'm focusing on the physics side. The closest thing to telecommunications systems I've worked with is oscilliators for mobile units.

In other words, he thinks up the technology that I stick screwdrivers into, a decade or two later.

 

[amadeus]

Let ISPs charge different amounts for different sites and we'll see how long those ISPs stay in business.

 

[luiz]

I can't speak for how ATT was pre-breakup, or for that matter any time before the last 5 years or so, but having dealt with three major offices, as a "corporate partner", commercial tech, and home consumer for both voice and data circuits, I can say that "damn" is a word that I very much associate with the company, but "good" shouldn't be used within a dozen astronomical units of it. If they used to be damn good, they've since done a damn good job of trashing their own legacy.

Well they broke up much more time ago than 5 years.

 

[eyrei]

I've come to expect nothing but idiocy from these fools, so this is no surprise.

 

[IglooDame]

Let ISPs charge different amounts for different sites and we'll see how long those ISPs stay in business.

How many tier-1 or tier-2 broadband providers do you have in your area (i.e. they aren't just reselling a real telco's service)?

If Comcast, Adelphia, ATT, Verizon, and a couple regional Bells go over to this model, 95% of home users have a choice of this or dial-up.

Edit: irrelevant anyway, as Perfection points out next post.

 

[Perfection]

Let ISPs charge different amounts for different sites and we'll see how long those ISPs stay in business.

You're thinking on the wrong end, they'd charge websites for preferential treatment not consumers.

 

[amadeus]

It sounds an awful lot like racketeering; I don't think some sites would go for it.

 

[jameson]

I'm reminded of the debate on the taxation of dividends a couple of years back; back then, it was argued that it was unfair to levy taxes both on corporate profits on which the dividends are based, and then to tax the dividends again as income when they were paid out to investors. Rejection of net neutrality implies that it's OK for the telcos to charge both the providers of content/data and those receiving it.

The implications are actually bigger than your local ISP charging Google more, though. Allowing differentiated pricing for providers of data also has huge effects on VoIP and digital TV provision. If a telco starts a VoIP or internet TV service, it can very well try to price the competition out of existence by charging more for the data packets sent by rival services. So the only competition in these markets might end up being between the owner of the DSL network and the owner of the cable network, and duopolies usually lend themselves to collusion rather than competition (unless carriers are prohibited from launching their own VoIP services, something I don't see happening).

 

[betazed]

Well, net nuetrality garuntees that all websites recieve equal access from the consumer. Without Net Nuetrality, ISPs can charge website for preferential treatment. That means that your ISP may say allow you to connect to civfanatics at only 100kbs but may allow you to connect to paying websites (say yahoo) at much faster speeds.

Not exactly.

Net neutrality means that ISPs will prioritize network packets between paying and non-paying customers.

So, it does not mean that you can connect to CFC at 100kbps and to yahoo at 1 Mbps, but rather, when there are lots of packets that need to be routed yahoo packets will get more priority and route faster than CFC packets. When there is lesser load on the network CFC will route as fast as yahoo. Theoritically, there is no limit on the speed with which you can connect to CFC (or to yahoo) even without net neutrality.

 

[Oerdin]

Let ISPs charge different amounts for different sites and we'll see how long those ISPs stay in business.

The ISPs won't do that. Instead they will go to the big sites' owners and say "pay me $X" or I will slow down your traffic".

It's hard to see how this was anything other then a special interest give away to the telcom companies. At least the Senate tends to be less likely to bow down to the special interests of certain industries so there is still hope that this stupid bill will not become law.

 

[Blazer6]

I read an article related to this in Popular Science that mentioned paying for goods will lead to stealth taxes after using advertising companies as Amazon, Google, Yahoo. They will see greater profit margins since it is popular among consumers.
I thought of a future where ISP's advertise by telling consumers which groups of sites will be delivered the highest allocated speeds and there will be an asterix including sites that will not have any large amount of bandwidth unless you pay extra. It is akin to censorship but instead there is so little bandwidth that you must pay more to access sites that are available now.

 

[A'AbarachAmadan]

AT&T should never have been broken up in the first place.
It was one of the most innovative companies in history.

Agree with the second sentence, but it was time to break them up. They had become an overly expensive bureaucracy that kept prices inflated. I remember when my dad used to time phone calls to my cousins because they were over $1/min inside the same state. Now I can call from Japan to the US for under $0.03/min. This was made possible by competition and innovation since the breakup.

 

[luiz]

Agree with the second sentence, but it was time to break them up. They had become an overly expensive bureaucracy that kept prices inflated. I remember when my dad used to time phone calls to my cousins because they were over $1/min inside the same state. Now I can call from Japan to the US for under $0.03/min. This was made possible by competition and innovation since the breakup.

It was made possible by electronic telephony, which they invented.
Was there anything preventing a better company of challenging them?

 

[JohnRM]

As with other issues, I shall vote with my wallet. If I am not able to access any website that I wish with reasonable speed, I will cease my patronage of the internet.

 

[A'AbarachAmadan]

It was made possible by electronic telephony, which they invented.
Was there anything preventing a better company of challenging them?

Yes, the US gov't did not allow competition - you could not legally provide the same service; that was true in multiple areas (such as electricity, water, trash, etc) - basic services; most of those can now be competitive. That was the whole point of the breakup - to allow and initially create competition.

 

[luiz]

Yes, the US gov't did not allow competition - you could not legally provide the same service; that was true in multiple areas (such as electricity, water, trash, etc) - basic services; most of those can now be competitive. That was the whole point of the breakup - to allow and initially create competition.

So the fault was entirely of the government, as usual.
They should just get rid of the law and leave AT&T alone, though.

 

[Cuivienen]

So the fault was entirely of the government, as usual.
They should just get rid of the law and leave AT&T alone, though.

The problem was that AT&T was already too large and powerful for any new company to have hopes of competing against it even once AT&T lost its exclusive rights.

However, the resulting Baby Bells were small enough that other companies could compete with them, and, indeed, some (such as Bell Atlantic) were later swallowed up by other companies. (Bell Atlantic is now Verizon.)

For someone who believes in the infinite capability of the free market, you aren't making a very good argument for encouraging the free market.

 

[luiz]

The problem was that AT&T was already too large and powerful for any new company to have hopes of competing against it even once AT&T lost its exclusive rights.

However, the resulting Baby Bells were small enough that other companies could compete with them, and, indeed, some (such as Bell Atlantic) were later swallowed up by other companies. (Bell Atlantic is now Verizon.)

For someone who believes in the infinite capability of the free market, you aren't making a very good argument for encouraging the free market.

Free market means precisely no government intervention. Breaking up companies to try to fix government stupidity is not free market.

If AT&T was indeed becoming inefficient, new companies would gradually take their place. Giants who basically had monopolies have been surpassed in the past. Look at Ford for exemple.

 

[Oerdin]

Can someone fairly explain this, and what is going on on both sides? Why should I care?

Network neutrality is a law which requires common carriers like phone companies and internet providers to treat every number/address the same as every other. The telcom companies and the ISPs would like this law removed so they can charge more to allow customers to access certain pages or phone numbers. Essentially this is an attempt by big telcoms to shake down large internet companies and consumers.

The telcoms will go to eay or amazon or any website they want and say "pay me $X or I will make sure traffic to your site slows down and if you pay me $X + $Y I will make sure your traffic gets priority". Thus the winners of internet business will not be the company with the best products or services but will instead favor those companies large enough and rich enough to bribe telcoms to get favored access. That's not good for start ups and that's not good for consumers but the Republican controlled House of Reps doesn't care because big Telcom is filling their coffers with "contributions" (that's politician speak for bribes).