HR 5252 Bill Dies

Oronar writes to mention a post on the 'Save the Internet' site applauding the death of Ted Stevens' bill. From the post: "The fate of Net Neutrality has now been passed to what appears to be a more Web-friendly Congress ... The end of this Congress -- and death of Sen. Ted Stevens' bad bill -- gives us the chance to have a long overdue public conversation about what the future of the Internet should look like. This will not only include ensuring Net Neutrality, but making the Internet faster, more affordable and accessible."

Yep, dead for now...

[zappepcs]

Next year we will see it as a tag on part of a bill called something like "Keep soldier safe bill" and in trying to save our soldiers or keep porn from the kiddies, they'll find a way to control the tubes of the intarwebs...

Re:The story assumes

[MindStalker]

While I agree with you post, it ignores the history of US telecommunications. First of all the US government paid most of the initial infrastructure cost for the phone network in the US. Time for an example. Lets say the US government in its grand stupidity had contracted out the creation of the Interstate system. They said, OK private companies here is a load of cash to build the interstate, you build it, and you can charge fees, and 95% of those fees have to go back into maintainance and building new roads. That is exactly how the phone system was build and maintained untill the mid 90s. At that point they said, Hey there is demand for an all new phone (sorry falling off the methaphore here, oh forget about the raods) system using fiberoptics. You remove that 95% requirement and give us some extra tax breaks, and we will be motivated more to build a newer better system. Congress fell for this (bribed, whatever..) and that is where we stand today, with the new system that was promised never built. The phone companies are now saying, hey we are thinking about building extra toll booths, ones that allow us to charge large trucks based upon the value of their load and not just how much it weights, and other stuff too. Technically there was nothing in law to stop them from doing it besides oversight, but the new HR 5252 was going to remove a lot of that oversight. Now we are just waking up and realizing the boondongle we got ourselfs into.

Personally I think the government should claim ownership of ALL lines, and then remove all regulations. Meaning if you want to build new lines and compete with the government, thats fine, but you're going to have to do it on your own penny. But the current system which was created from government money really should belong to the people, not these companies.

Re:The story assumes

[ciscoguy01]

If you are actually looking at the situation you might realize the problem stems from the government granting monopolies initially.

Close, but not exactly right. The government granted monopolies to the phone company, the electric company, the gas company for good reason. We really didn't want 17 sets of electric wires on the pole out back, did we? Nope.
So what we as a society did was HIRE those companies and gave them a special position in society as regulated utilities.

We paid them to build those networks. The money they used, it wasn't their money, it was OURS. Remember the "Rate Cases" they had to file with the PUC to get a rate increase? "We had to build new wires here, we built a central office there, it cost this much." They were then granted rates as the exclusive provider for those services that guaranteed them a certain ROI (return on investment).

Now there's the "special" position they got, what business is guaranteed to make a certain amount of money, if they lose money somehow they would magically get new increased rates to guarantee that ROI I mentioned? All the while being protected from competition? Not too many.

But now they are big companies and they don't wanna be protected anymore, at least in their "new media" divisions, but there's no real competiton there either.

Think about it: Seen those AT&T ads for $12.99 DSL? After a 1 year term they raise that to $26.99. The $12.99 price is only for "new customers". After you have had them for a year you are no longer "new" so they jack the prices up.

What can you do? Not much, since they have put most of their competitors out of business by overcharging them to use the copper wires that go out to your house and the space in the CO to where they were losing money.

The few competitors that are left are selling DSL on much the same terms but you can't really switch from AT&T to them since AT&T is using your copper pair to provide that DSL service to you, the one they just jacked up the rates on. If you want to switch you have to first cancel the AT&T DSL and wait 2 months for them to "release the line", after which the competitor can hook you up.

You get 2 months downtime. So no real competition.

Back to the "net neutrality" argument. Here's what's really going on:

The phone company wants to screw up the packets of their competitors. Mostly VOIP packets, but they are not proud, they will figure out more mischief that they can use to cheat us.

If you get VOIP phone service from one of their competitors they will delay every fouth packet 950 ms. So the phone calls would arrive out of order. Choppy, digital distorted calls. You couldn't use their competitors, only them. Nothing else would work.

If you get VOIP phone service from them it will work great since they control the network and they will then let the packets go on through.

Their argument is they want to provide service to *their* customers. If you are someone else's customer, you will be screwed with. Now they aren't really going to use their scarce resources to serve their own customers instead of YOU, they are going to screw you up deliberately. They have plenty capacity and you are paying them anyway.

When you call them to complain about your bad internet connection that won't work for the services they want to sell you they will say "switch to us and you will then get good service."

The ideal of "hands off the internet" is a completely bogus argument dredged up mostly by the same phone companies. It's mostly fake. A smokescreen.

They don't want to have to provide the service YOU are paying them for. They WILL, but only as long as you keep paying them.

If you want to use a competitive service they will screw it up so you will come back to them.

They hate competition.

How about dealing with blocking of port 80?

[volkris]

It seems to me that a much more important discussion is being completely overlooked. With all the focus on the interdealings of large selfinterested corporations nobody seems to be talking about the evolution of the access that consumers are seeing today.

"The internet" has largely come to mean "the web" with everything else being secondary. This evolution has severe implications for everything from self publication to the value of peer to peer communication. In short, it seems that most ISPs have made it illegal to run any servers or do anything else that results in decentralization of power. This creates an environment where all content MUST be hosted on the servers of some powerhouse, and therefore be subject to whatever costs that involves.

The internet no longer connects people and people. It connects people to businesses that sometimes happen to relay traffic from person to person.

Let people do what they want with traffic and then it doesn't matter quite so much whether YouTube is being slowed down: the big centralized sites won't hold such a monopoly on the content.

Re:The story assumes

[Dhalka226]

The government granted monopolies to the phone company, the electric company, the gas company for good reason. We really didn't want 17 sets of electric wires on the pole out back, did we?

That's only half true. The examples you provided are what economists refer to as "natural monopolies," the definition of which is when one firm can provide a service cheaper than many competing firms can. It's not so much that we would mind 17 different sets of wires on our poles (I'm sure that carries it's own problems, though); it's that it costs an ungodly sum of money to run all these wires, gas pipes, telephone cables, etc. If we somehow tried to fragment the audience 17 different ways, the nearly sure bet is that most if not all of these companies would fail to make enough money to make back the money they spent laying those wires, or they would be forced to charge absolutely obscene rates to do so. Knowing that, we did subsidize these industries.

That's not to say that you're not allowed to compete with them if you wanted -- that's exactly what CLECS did, by concentrating on big urban areas and installing then-new fiber optic lines in those densely-populated areas to handle telephone traffic -- just that we recognize competition in these areas was, at the time, fairly limited. The FCC was created to manage the nonsense, and they have been struggling with ways to do it ever since. For example:

"We had to build new wires here, we built a central office there, it cost this much."

Was one of their original attempts at the matter, but that encourages gold plating--buying the most obscenely expensive equipment regardless of whether or not it was needed, because the government would use those costs to increase your profits. Obviously that was not desirable, so they went from scheme to scheme trying to find one that works.

Not much, since they have put most of their competitors out of business by overcharging them to use the copper wires that go out to your house and the space in the CO to where they were losing money.

I'm fairly certain that the costs of these UNE (Unbundled Network Elements) are still regulated by the FCC and state agencies for copper lines. Fiber, however, was recently determined by FCC decision to not fall under the same rules. That's why you saw telephone companies suddenly burst onto the scene with plans to lay a gazillion miles of fiber. They aren't obligated to lease it to competitors.

You're pretty much on about the net neutrality stuff, and they obviously have a bullshit case. The public owns the majority of their wires; whether we use them as our ISP or not should not affect our service. Carrying traffic indiscriminately was part of the deal they signed up for all those years ago.

Re:summary of ted stevens' bill?

[jmauro]

So what was it with all the talk from the presidents of the telephone companies using a QoS network to extract more money from the Googles and Yahoos to allow their traffic a "higher" priority then others all about. If it was just about QoS and they gave tools to the end user to adjust his or her QoS settings, then it wouldn't be a problem. It seems to be more about the telecom companies being allowed to decided what traffic they will/will not carry without losing their common carrier status.

Re:The story assumes

[Guy Harris]

First of all the US government paid most of the initial infrastructure cost for the phone network in the US. Time for an example. Lets say the US government in its grand stupidity had contracted out the creation of the Interstate system. They said, OK private companies here is a load of cash to build the interstate, you build it, and you can charge fees, and 95% of those fees have to go back into maintainance and building new roads. That is exactly how the phone system was build and maintained untill the mid 90s.

Indeed? The US government paid all the money to string those phone lines and build those telephone switchboards and switches, and just hired Ma Bell to run it? AT&T and its subsidiaries didn't spend their own money building the phone nework? Could you please cite a document that supports your assertion?

Exactly

[remmelt]

Well, the ISPs thought it wasn't fair that the Googles of the world got to use their (the ISPs) network for free. They felt they had the right to charge Google or Yahoo or MS for use of those network tubes. This is unfair because Google is already paying for its access to the internet by being hooked up to backbones, renting serverspace (well, not in Google's case, but you get what I mean), etc. This greedy move on the part of the ISPs was then justified by saying it's in the customer's best interest. I don't see how it's in my best interest when my ISP suddenly decides which packets it deems more important than others, and which sites pay them more money to get the best response times. Also, when I wake up tomorrow with the great idea for the new MySpaceGoogleTubeFlickr2.0, I'd have to pay off the ISPs to get my site delivered to the customers in a timely fashion. This would stifle innovation.

That's about all I remember off the top of my head, I'm glad this bill has now died.

Re:Anti-Network Neutrality ad.

[hackwrench]

Unfortunately, the ad has actually been airing, and I think that there are people uneducated and prone to just follow to buy into it.

Same song, second verse same as the first.

[davmoo]

Anyone who thinks the Democrats are any more "net friendly" than the Republicans is being woefully naive. Neither party gives a flying fuck about John Q. AverageAmericanNetUser or Jane Y. Nerd. Except for one tiny difference (the Republicans rob from the middle class and give to the rich, while the Democrats rob from the middle class and give to the poor), both parties are a carbon copy of each other. And just like the Republicrats, the Democins will do what is in their own best interests and the best interests of their corporate contributors.

The United States has the best political system in the world...we have the best political system money can buy.

Re:summary of ted stevens' bill?

[cecil_turtle]

Think of Net Neutrality like making your ISP's service to you a utility, like electricity. You pay for what you use (bandwidth). Without Net Neutrality, customers (you) or content providers (google, youtube, etc.) will have to pay more money on top of the bandwidth they use for no good reason (it doesn't cost the ISP any more money to transfer google's bits than it does AOL's bits or VoIP bits). The equivalent in our electric utility example would be if the electric company charged you a higher rate for the electricity that powers your TV vs. the electricity that powers your refrigerator. Or even more accurately if your electric company charged you a higher rate for electricity when your TV is watching Lost or Heroes vs. when you're watching a Stargate rerun. Net Neutrality is good - you want your internet connection to be like a utility - bits is bits, like watts is watts. Others have addressed the QOS issue, but basically QOS is a solution for getting good enough performance out of a specific protocol / service when your bandwidth is all used up. If this is the case, buy more bandwidth to give you the overhead you need and then you won't need QOS.

Re:Running servers@home...

[volkris]

and others such as Netmeeting, which lets grandma talk to her grandkids, webfolders, vnc servers, and remote desktop servers, which let businessmen work from home and increase productivity, perhaps even when increasing time with their families, and components of various video games.

Arguably allowing people to run servers encourages them to educate themselves on the basics of what a server is, which then educates them on the security implications of servers. They'll know a little more about what spambots and zombies are and how to protect their computers against infestations. The current one way internet encourages a mindset that can't recognize the existence of these bad things.