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The Internet Government United States Politics

FCC Votes Yet Another Study of Net Neutrality 102

yuna49 writes to let us know that the US Federal Communications Commission last week announced a Notice of Inquiry (PDF) into: "...the behavior of broadband market participants, including: (1) How broadband providers are managing Internet traffic on their networks today; (2) Whether providers charge different prices for different speeds or capacities of service; (3) Whether our policies should distinguish between content providers that charge end users for access to content and those that do not; (4) How consumers are affected by these practices." eWeek reports that the study is targeted at whether broadband providers are treating some content providers more favorably than others. Distinctly absent is any discussion about port filtering or other restrictions on Internet usage. The two Democrats on the Commission pressed for a broader "Notice of Rulemaking" to move more quickly towards a policy of non-discrimination. The Republican majority ignored these arguments and voted for an Inquiry, to which the Democrats acceded.
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FCC Votes Yet Another Study of Net Neutrality

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  • The Republican majority ignored these arguments and voted for an Inquiry, to which the Democrats acceded.

    I don't get it...Why in the world is there a Republican majority?
    • by heinousjay ( 683506 ) on Monday March 26, 2007 @09:08PM (#18496407) Journal
      The FCC isn't Congress, it's part of the Executive branch.
    • by Eddi3 ( 1046882 )
      Maybe because a majority of the people (voters) are Republicans? That is what majority means.
      • Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)

        by omeomi ( 675045 )
        Maybe because a majority of the people (voters) are Republicans? That is what majority means.

        How do you figure? The last election was decidedly favorable for the Democrats...And the last presidential election was won by a very slim majority. Given that an incumbent generally has pretty big advantage, especially during wartime, the best you could argue is that half of the voters are Republicans. Realistically, it's much less than that, because there are a lot of people who vote for whomever they like in
        • I think maybe he meant people who voted in this particular election. Wasn't very clear about that though.
        • by msouth ( 10321 )

          Given that an incumbent generally has pretty big advantage


          Yeah, but when you have the huge budgets of the MSM campaigning against the war, you might get a distorted outcome.
          • by omeomi ( 675045 )
            Yeah, but when you have the huge budgets of the MSM campaigning against the war, you might get a distorted outcome.

            Exactly which mass media outlet is campaigning against the war? I can't say I've seen any campaigning, and despite what the Bush administration wants us all to believe, reporting real things about the war that Bush doesn't like instead of warm fuzzy make believe stories about it isn't the same as campaigning, it's called "reporting".
            • by msouth ( 10321 )
              Reporting bad things about the war is not the problem. Reporting only bad things is. You think that there are only bad things to report. That's because you believe what they say. They also believe what they say, because they don't believe anything good could come of it (like freedom for Kurds, for example, end of tyranny by Sunni minority, etc.) They aren't looking for the rest of the story, only the part of the story that is important for the public to know--people are getting killed. That's what we
  • They're going to continue this until they get the vote desired.
  • This article is worthless without some kind of reference to tubes.
  • Along these lines... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by kmac06 ( 608921 ) on Monday March 26, 2007 @09:22PM (#18496509)
    My question for Net Neutrality has always been: why do we need a law like this? What is currently happening that needs to be fixed by this law? Forcing websites to cough up to be given a high bandwidth access to end users would be bad, but (AFAIK) that's not happening. I really don't see a need for this type of law, and I see no reason to make a law to solve a problem that doesn't exist.
    • by maxume ( 22995 )
      Network neutrality at the moment is largely a result of common carrier regulation by the FTC. The idea behind net neutrality legislation is to codify that regulation into law, rather than hoping that things don't change, and to make the regulation apply evenly to all ISPs.
      • by kmac06 ( 608921 )
        From Wikipedia Net Neutrality article [wikipedia.org]: Currently there is full network neutrality in the United States, meaning that telecommunications companies do not offer different rates to internet consumers based on content or service type; however, there are no legal restrictions against this .

        How is this not a solution in search of a problem? Are there regulations that can be enforced, but wouldn't fall under "legal restriction" as defined in Wikipedia?
        • by maxume ( 22995 )
          They are at the whim of the FCC. Read the rest of the article. The regulatory environment, i.e. the 'threat of regulation', right now is enough to keep things running. The idea behind legislation is to take it out of the hands of the FCC, making it 'more guaranteed'.
        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by Irvu ( 248207 )
          However at least some of the carriers have begun doing two things: a) arguing that Net Neutrality is illogical and inappropriate and that they need to implement biases, and b) implementing biases. Most noteably many users of Vonage and Comcast have seen their service degrade drastically in recent months just after Comcast released its own competing service.

          • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

            by Irvu ( 248207 )
            So just to follow up. It is not a solution in search of a problem it is a problem that is growing and being grown by many well-funded actors who no longer want net neutrality (but still want common carrier restrictions). The goal now is to put in place a hard Net Neutrality mandate (i.e. one not based on the vote of four or five appointed persons) before Net Neutrality is no longer the status quo.

            At this point at least some of the carriers have begun to (apparently) break the rules as they see fit all the
        • by MobyDisk ( 75490 )
          Then that article is completely wrong. I'll submit an edit. That doesn't even make sense.

          that telecommunications companies do not offer different rates to internet consumers based on content or service type

          What? I've never heard of an ISP that didn't offer different rates to customers based on service type. Let me do a quick check here:

          Earthlink [earthlink.net] has 3 plans ranging from $29.95/month for 1.5Mbps to $44.95/month for 6Mbps.
          Comcast [comcast.com] has 2 plans - 12MBps burst rate for $42.95/month and 16MBps burst rate for $52.95/month.

          And am I supposed to believe that Slashdot pays $42.95/month for their internet connection? I'll start

          • by quanticle ( 843097 ) on Monday March 26, 2007 @11:30PM (#18497515) Homepage
            However, you notice that there is no mention made of *where* your traffic goes. The fact that you pay one flat rate to access Google, Slashdot, Youtube, and what have you is due to the FCC's Net Neutrality regulation. Without this regulation, your cable or telephone company would be within its rights to charge you different rates for different web sites. In essence, the Internet would become like cable TV, with websites being broken into various tiers, and you having to pay extra to access other tiers.

            Example: if Comcast struck a deal with Yahoo, Yahoo would become the default search engine, and Google would be moved into a "premium" tier, meaning that I'd have to pay extra in order to access Google. I don't have to do this today because of Net Neutrality.
            • But then again, your example is of search engines and data aggregates.

              Where exactly does regulation begin and end? In an open market economy, access to data is a commodity, not the data itself. Providers would have to establish some sort of NYSE to measure value of Web sites and price them accordingly.

              Also, just because you have the entrance into the Internet does not automatically grant you access to the data. If you wish to continue your example, then owners of the servers would be able to exact tolls a

            • Example: if Comcast struck a deal with Yahoo, Yahoo would become the default search engine, and Google would be moved into a "premium" tier, meaning that I'd have to pay extra in order to access Google. I don't have to do this today because of Net Neutrality.

              Let's imagine Comcast enters into an agreement with Yahoo, and begins charging their customers higher rates for visiting Google. I think we can all agree that would suck. In fact, it would suck so much that competing ISPs would take notice at Comcast's irate customer base, and would offer Internet service at fixed, flat rates.

              Bottom line is if the customers don't want to be charged based on *what* they access instead of *how much* they access, then there will always be an eager business ready to make a buc

              • >>In fact, it would suck so much that competing ISPs would take notice at Comcast's irate customer base, and would offer Internet service at fixed, flat rates.<<

                That would only apply in places where Comcast didn't have a monopoly for geographic reasons. I am currently forced to use Comcast because I am too far from Qwest's switching station to get DSL service. So, in my case there would have to be a sufficiently high number of irate people for Qwest to build out its infrastructure to accommoda
    • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Think of it as an extension of the antitrust regulations...

      In this case the laws are possibly needed to control the backbone operators who will have no qualms about charging "unneutrally" once the market is ripe, which will give ISPs no choice but to pass it on to a consumer.

      After all, 1000 bytes of email is "worth" more to a consumer than the same 1kB as part of a streaming audio. Now look at the cell phone industry in the US to see the kind of shit the Internet will turn into once they reason like that.
      • by kmac06 ( 608921 )
        When ISPs start doing this, and it actually becomes a problem, I'll (probably) support some form of Net Neutrality. Until then, I see no reason for government regulation.
        • by Dan541 ( 1032000 )
          [quote]When ISPs start doing this, and it actually becomes a problem, I'll (probably) support some form of Net Neutrality. Until then, I see no reason for government regulation.[/quote] Its only a matter of time until your ISP wants to charge youtube in order for you to receive faster content from them or they want to charge you more for running a premium service e.g bit-torrent that uses more bandwidth than normal web browsing.
          • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

            by kmac06 ( 608921 )
            Maybe, maybe not. Until then, there is no need to pass a law that will stifle innovation in other uses of Internet technology.
            • by MobyDisk ( 75490 ) on Monday March 26, 2007 @11:39PM (#18497569) Homepage
              That's another myth. How does network neutrality stifle innovation? When common carrier laws were created for shipping companies, it didn't stifle innovation. Nor did it stifle innovation for telephone companies. And it isn't stifling internet companies either.

              I've been replying a lot to this discussion, so let me cut down to the real reason we are in the situation we have now:
              Comcast says I get 4Mbps of bandwidth. But they really divided 400Mbps across 100 customers, said I get 4Mbps (that's a simplified version). Now that everybody wants to download stuff from YouTube, Comcast finds that they don't actually have enough bandwidth to give everyone 4MBps. So they decide that maybe they can charge some customers to have priority over others. They make more money and finance their rollout of real 4MBps service. They they tell everyone it is 8MBps service, and sell another the option to give priority over other users. This cycle repeats forever. But it's a scam - one person gets 4MBps only because someone else's connection is now slowed down even further because their packets are delayed. You see, you really can't "speed up" a packet, you can only slow one down. There's an expression "robbing Peter to pay Paul" when you get behind on one bill, and so you pay another bill late to make this one on time. That's what the ISPs want to do.

              A similar thing happened years ago with phone service. Phone companies would sell caller ID, and a service to block sales calls. They they sold the sales people a service to block their number. Then they sold a service to send blocked numbers to a special message that told them to leave a message. Then they sold sales people a service that got around the special message. In the end, nobody ever got what they paid for. The phone companies just pitted their customers against each other. So it is with "priority" service. Once everyone pays for priority, who has priority then?

              Instead, we need to go the opposite direction than all of this. We need to make ISPs report accurate information on their service level (The FDA mandates food labeling and nobody went out of business). Then, we need to open-up the local telco lines to competition. You do that by separating ISP service from phone line service. Ex: Verizon does the local phone lines, but Comcast, Earthlink, CavTel, etc. provide ISP services over those lines. This will open-up real competition. In Maryland, they passed a law about 5 years ago that did this, and DSL suddenly appeared everywhere and new ISPs arrived. Now that the law reverted, my current ISP is likely to vanish since my local telco (Verizon) can force them out of business once the time limit is up.

              It all gets really complicated. But in the end, Network Neutrality just means everyone is treated fairly. It has worked in every aspect of the telecom industry thus far. If your issue is that no law is needed, that is a reasonable position since the FCC is handling this now. But remember, the telecom companies stand to gain a lot by starting the phony "prioritization" scam, and you will find fake blogs and links all over the place with info about why Network Neutrality is evil. The telecoms see a chance at eliminating the FCC law, and the fight is really just to retain the status quo, more so than to add any new regulation.
              • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

                by bendodge ( 998616 )
                I am personally against the current form of net neutrality. I think that government intervetion is almost always bad. The ONLY regulations that should be passed:

                1. All backbone providers must allow other providers to connect to them on a naked pipe.
                2. All providers must use standard protocols*.
                3. Providers may only throttle data/bandwidth based on protocol, not orgin/destination.


                *I'd leave defining "standard" up to ICAAN, with these additional rules:
                1. The protocol must be open - anyone can see how it works
                • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

                  by MobyDisk ( 75490 )
                  Except for throttling by protocol, I would agree. Throttling by protocol sounds reasonable, but I don't trust the ISPs to do it equitably. They'll do something smarmy like slow video then charge a special rate for it, even if there is plenty of bandwidth available. In theory, rule #1 in your list means I can just switch providers, but I doubt the list will include someone completely neutral.

                  How's this? They can throttle based on protocol but only using the throttling rules that I set.

                  Also, the major ban
                  • Well, I agree to certain, very limited, throttling of protocol (or more accurately, throttling by level of service). For example, any emergency or vital service should be given priority. During a crisis, all emergency services should be given priority, but should not be charged extra for this. If there is a crisis, I will not complain if I can't access Slashdot for awhile. Actually, there doesn't have to be a crisis, even on a regular day, communications for hospitals, firefighters, police, National Wea
                    • by MobyDisk ( 75490 )

                      If the FCC wants to make a rule saying that two-way, real-time voice communication can have priority over other forms of net traffic because it is necessary for the service to work

                      I think this scenario is the crux of our disagreement. My guess is this: if prioritization is necessary to make it work, then it is because there is not enough bandwidth to go around, so either: 1) the user needs to throttle back their bit rate and/or latency expectations; or 2) the network capacity needs to be increased. I don't think re-prioritizing would actually solve the problem anyway. If videoconferencing was eating up that much bandwidth, then the videoconferences would likely start to interfere

                    • You say, "if prioritization is necessary to make it work, then it is because there is not enough bandwidth to go around, so either: 1) the user needs to throttle back their bit rate and/or latency expectations; or 2) the network capacity needs to be increased" That is exactly the point. Network capacity needs to be increased. If all the energy going into the net neutrality fight went into the fight to increase capacity we might be able to make some progress!
                    • by MobyDisk ( 75490 )

                      That is exactly the point. Network capacity needs to be increased.

                      We agree on this point.

                      If all the energy going into the net neutrality fight went into the fight to increase capacity we might be able to make some progress!

                      But if we don't get network neutrality, then the telecom companies won't increase capacity.

                      The whole point of network neutrality, from the telecom point of view, is to make money without spending money to increase capacity. They would rather just sell "prioritization" services. They are trying to convince the FCC and the legislature that they cannot possibly increase capacity without "alternate streams of revenue" (AKA scamming their customers)

                      If we win the fight for network neutr

                    • You can look at it the other way too. They will not build out more capacity if they don't have the right to reserve a portion for their own use. I absolutely agree we need an open internet. I absolutely agree there must be protection against discriminatory behavior. But I don't see how, if they increase capacity to what they should, why we would stop them for reserving a portion for video and private network sevices that would help pay for the investment.
                    • by MobyDisk ( 75490 )

                      They will not build out more capacity if they don't have the right to reserve a portion for their own use.

                      Network Neutrality hasn't stopped them from building out before. They are still doing it now.

                      Why we would stop them for reserving a portion for video and private network sevices that would help pay for the investment.

                      Network neutrality doesn't stop them from reserving a portion for video and private network services. There's nothing in the law that stops them from doing that now. Plenty of companies pay for private network services, and they can run anything they want over that. And plenty of companies run the wire themselves and use it for their own purposes. The military does. DARPA did it. Universities do it to conne

              • You say: "Comcast says I get 4Mbps of bandwidth. But they really divided 400Mbps across 100 customers, said I get 4Mbps (that's a simplified version). Now that everybody wants to download stuff from YouTube, Comcast finds that they don't actually have enough bandwidth to give everyone 4MBps." In your hypothetical example the problem seems to me is that they only have the "400 mbps" to divide among those 100 customers. The real problem in the US is that there is the lack of capacity and the lack of speed.
        • Didn't Cox communications start blocking Vonage in one of the Southern states (Tennessee, I think) a little while ago? As I recall consumer outrage forced Cox to relent on the ban, but there was no regulation forcing Cox to do so.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by SeaFox ( 739806 )

      I really don't see a need for this type of law, and I see no reason to make a law to solve a problem that doesn't exist.

      I'm sure people said the same thing about Fair Use rights. "Why do we need a law that proactively states people can use their music they purchased any way they see fit?" The record companies would never do something so consumer unfriendly as to try an dictate how people enjoy their product, or say they had to buy a separate copy of an album on tape to use in their Walkman instead of just d

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by MobyDisk ( 75490 )
      I can answer some of those questions for you:

      why do we need a law like this?

      We already have a net neutrality law, which is why very little is currently happening. But the current neutrality law is really just an FCC statute called the "common carrier" [wikipedia.org] law, and the statute was weakened a few years ago. One particular ISP announced that they think neutrality is unfair, and they plan on violating it. (It was a quote about how Google doesn't pay that ISP when Google traffic went to their customers, which isn't true. I would have to dig

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        Net Neutrality has nothing to do with bandwidth to end users. I'm not sure where that one came from.

        ... or re-prioritize the network stream...

        Having my bittorrent re-prioritized behind VOIP would slow the rate, no? Should everyone else on my block use VOIP all the time while I'm socially inept and spend all my time downloading different linux distros because I can't make up my mind, I could have my bandwidth throttled. In this case I am, btw, an end user.

      • We already have a net neutrality law, which is why very little is currently happening. But the current neutrality law is really just an FCC statute called the "common carrier" law, and the statute was weakened a few years ago. One particular ISP announced that they think neutrality is unfair, and they plan on violating it. (It was a quote about how Google doesn't pay that ISP when Google traffic went to their customers, which isn't true. I would have to dig to find the quote.)

        Basically companies are decidin
      • by dgatwood ( 11270 )

        But the current neutrality law is really just an FCC statute called the "common carrier" law, and the statute was weakened a few years ago.

        ISPs are not common carriers. Therein lies the problem. Weakened? Try obliterated, at least from a networking perspective.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by burnin1965 ( 535071 )

      What is currently happening that needs to be fixed by this law? Forcing websites to cough up to be given a high bandwidth access to end users would be bad, but (AFAIK) that's not happening.

      Yet. There have been noises lately from corporations who wish to cash in on mergers which have created large blocks of internet subscribers. Noteably the CEO of SBC has been making serious threats to change the way the internet works [techdirt.com] by charging content providers to have access to SBC customers.

      And make no mistake about i

    • I agree such a law would be stupid and could be abused by people who want more hits. Think of another law (Not net related) that has been abused, the Americans with Disablities Act. That law was so badly written that if you show up to work drunk they can't fire you. Something similar upon the stupidity scale would happen if thuis law was passed. Remember to Err is human to really SCREW THINGS UP it takes GOVERNMENT. One American President Said the Government that Governs least Governs Best. Oh by the way he
    • I guess the major problem is the previous occurrence of telecoms monopolies and that has really messed up the market. Presumably it is still being messed about with, and this is just another thing that makes the problem worse. They should get to the root of the problem and stop subsidising telecoms and giving them favours (and same with all companies.) Using another law to fix a previous problem caused by a law is nonsensical. However, I think, if there is a massive chain of stupid laws then it is much easi
  • They're just stalling. Sometimes it's easier to delay the affirmative plan indefinitely than to actually defeat it. Of course, it costs money, but it's "taxpayers" money, so that's all right. In northern california, we could really use a light rail system, as there are a lot of people who commute all the way to san francisco. Every year, there is a proposal to implement this. What happens is, they spend a couple more million on "studies", and spend the rest on widening the existing roads. This is like a co
    • Every year, there is a proposal to implement this. What happens is, they spend a couple more million on "studies", and spend the rest on widening the existing roads
      Congressional inquiries into Patriot HP domestic FBI illegal Enron .bomb wiretaps DMCA comes to mind.
    • I have no problem with the gist of your argument, but I'm unsure as to your example:
      In northern california, we could really use a light rail system, as there are a lot of people who commute all the way to san francisco.

      Please be more specific as to where you live. There are Amtrak commuter trains from the South Bay (as far south as Gilroy) and as far east as Sacramento. In the East Bay and Peninsula there is also BART. These all go to San Francisco. Perhaps you meant from the North Bay (Sonoma, Napa, etc.)?
  • #5 (Score:2, Interesting)

    #5: What happened to the subsidy money given to these providers?

    http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20060131/202124 0_F.shtml
  • Is there a way to submit comments to the study? Most Slashdotters can answer some of those "questions" off the top of their heads. I'm not going to fault the FCC for doing more research, just so long as it is real research and not a secret way to rubber-stamp some corporate agenda.
  • by Anonymous Coward
    John Walker was right http://www.fourmilab.ch/speakfree/ [fourmilab.ch]

    We lost a free and open and truly neutral internet a while ago. When and why did it become OK for every provider to dis-allow open ports and servers? Now a bunch of techno elitists will rush in and say, "Oh no one should be allow to run servers on those type of lines" and "ZOMG, spam will run amuck because people will be allowed to run servers!"
    1 - The spam argument is the same as the child porn argument - take away everyone's right because some people
    • It was around 2000 or 2001 I think. I bought DSL from a local ISP, who supplied it through SBC and my phone line. SBC made money and my ISP made money. I paid $25 for 5 fixed IP addresses, 128Kb/1.5Mb, and a Giganews feed. When I moved across town, 2002?, I was NOT able to just transfer my service because my ISP could no longer sell any DSL, SBC wouldn't allow it. I ended up getting DSL from SBC for $25 and a PPPoE connection. Since the software they wanted to install on my PC COULD allow SBC to play aroun

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