GOP Bill Would Prohibit FCC From Reclassifying ISPs as Common Carriers

http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/29/house-republicans-look-to-curb-fccs-authority-to-enforce-net-neutrality/

by atomicfiredoll • 12 years ago

37 27 12 years ago

techcrunch.com

Alupis5• 12 years ago

This is not really a "GOP Bill". It's really one Representative's bill. (perhaps influenced by the big5 isp's)

I doubt it will go anywhere.

(Let's not let partisanship get in the way of net neutrality folks.)

ceejayoz• 12 years ago

He's the Vice Chair of the House Subcommittee on Communications and Technology.

Alupis5• 12 years ago

That does not matter. In the USA, House Representatives can draft their own bills at any time.

Now, if a huge portion of the party co-signs or sign-support of the bill, then it would be fair to call it a "GOP Backed Bill". But right now, it's not.

atomicfiredoll• 12 years ago

An important peice not touched on in this article is that Senator Ted Cruz apparently said earlier this month that he plans to introduce similar legislation.

tzs2• 12 years ago

The official Republican party platform had opposition to FCC imposed net neutrality and opposition to applying old telecom regulation to the internet added in 2012.

This bill is in strong alignment with that platform. I would be surprised if it does not get strong GOP support.

Alupis5• 12 years ago

This is just plain wrong information. If you want to stereo-type and entire party's platform, then the GOP's would be anti-regulation and free-market... not imposing legislation to solidify "fast-lanes" and be generally anti-competitive.

Seriously, the Democrats don't understand the internet just as much as the GOP, or the Green Party, etc.

Let's stop making this a partisanship issue. Net neutrality is too important for petty squabbling.

delinka• 12 years ago

I paint myself as conservative. So I don't think we need more laws on the books protecting corporate interests. Play in a proper capitalist market (that indeed includes protections for consumers) or GTFO.

eli• 12 years ago

Other self-described conservatives would argue that's just what this bill is doing: preventing the FCC from unduly interfering with the ISP/content delivery market.

rayiner5• 12 years ago

"Reclassification would heap 80 years of regulatory baggage on broadband providers, restricting their flexibility to innovate and placing them at the mercy of a government agency."

He's not wrong. Title II is the worst kind of 1970's era regulatory framework, the kind we've been trying hard to leave behind since the Reagan. It was initially penned in 1934, for a world where AT&T was government-sanctioned monopoly. Worries about investment in the telecom sector were not applicable, because AT&T was guaranteed monopoly returns in consideration for being heavily regulated.

If you impose monopoly-era regulations without the security of having an actual monopoly, all you'll do is turn telecom into an investment ghetto. Who will want to invest tens of billions of dollars into "dumb pipes," just so software/internet companies can take all the profits because they're not regulated?

Note that countries that have gone the way of regulated telecom infrastructure didn't just impose common carrier regulations on existing privately-funded networks. E.g. when British Telecom was privatized, the government devised a system to guarantee that they would get substantial returns on their investment, and wrote those terms into the prospectus for private investors who bough the stock.

jrochkind12• 12 years ago

Where I live, along with where many people live, Comcast is pretty much indistinguishable from an 'actual monopoly'.

You think someone's going to invest tens of billions of dollars to try and lay down parallel wires to all of comcasts to compete with them? And would this be an efficient use of social resources?

You think Comcast is going to invest tens of billions of dollars into upgrading their infrastructure already, when they are already the only choice their customers have for broadband?

Alupis5• 12 years ago

If we get the Gov't to force ISP's to lease their copper/fiber to other ISP companies (smaller independent guys) then they wouldn't have to lay their own infrastructure and it would build a lot of competition quickly.

Telecom companies already have this regulation. (CLEC 1996)

rayiner5• 12 years ago

If municipalities would let them, I do think companies will lay down wires to pick off the high-end of the market from existing companies. Where I'm moving to in Baltimore, several high-end apartment buildings are wired with FIOS, even though the city wouldn't let Verizon wire more parts of the city. Competition like that will do a lot to encourage existing companies to upgrade their networks.

Moreover, you're taking a very narrow view of "competition" here. The average Comcast customer uses something like 2-3GB/month of data. That's easily accommodated by wireless. Demand for wireless data is exploding right now, not so much demand for wired data. That's real competition for Comcast.

pdonis2• 12 years ago

Who will want to invest tens of billions of dollars into "dumb pipes," just so software/internet companies can take all the profits because they're not regulated?

It looks to me like US ISPs aren't investing in infrastructure now anyway, so I don't see how new regulations could make things worse.

To me the key issue is that there are two separate businesses that are conflated in current US ISPs: selling users a pipe to the Internet, and selling users particular content that comes over that pipe. Current ISPs take advantage of monopolies granted to them in particular geographic areas by state and local governments to force users to buy a package that combines both of these things, even if that's not really what users want.

Common carrier regulation of the "pipe to the Internet" business would force the two things to be separated. If Comcast wants to be a content company because that's where all the profits are, fine: but then they shouldn't be able to force users to buy their pipe to the Internet to get their content (still less should they be able to charge other content providers extra to get faster access to their users' pipe to the Internet).

diminoten2• 12 years ago

If you read the Title II text [0], it was in no way written with the Internet in mind (okay so maybe that's obvious).

Why do people want the Internet to be governed this way? I'd rather the FCC come up with new regulation, designed specifically for the Internet, which also happened to provide net neutrality protection which prevented the horror stories (pay-per-view websites, etc.) while still allowing the ISPs to perform route optimizations (peering agreements).

That said, it seems like Google is making a heavy investment into fiber, while supporting the concept of net neutrality, (or "dumb pipes" as you call them), so the argument that no one will invest is provably false.

[0] http://transition.fcc.gov/Reports/tcom1996.txt

rayiner5• 12 years ago

Title II, as you can surmise, is much more than net neutrality. So Google's willingness to invest in fiber while committing to net neutrality doesn't refute my point about what would happen if the FCC imposed Title II. Also, its too early to draw conclusions from Google fiber. Google's stated purpose is to use Google Fiber to "shame" ISP's into offering faster service, which benefits their advertising-related business units. I don't think you can conclude that a company in Google's position, but without the internet business, would find fiber investment attractive. Finally, Google doesn't seem very eager to deploy fiber into the biggest markets, and in the markets where they have deployed, they have demanded extensive regulatory concessions.

The FCC would love to apply something lighter than Title II, like the "light touch" regime they have applied to cellular. But they don't have the authority under the Communications Act to come up with their own regime for telcos/cable companies.

dang• 12 years ago

Although net neutrality is on topic here, this story seems just to be ephemeral political churn, which is off topic here.

vaadu• 12 years ago

As much as I want fierce competition in this industry, the House of representatives is elected and the FCC is not.

IMHO all US regulations that have the force of law should have to be passed by both houses of congress to be legal.

Alupis5• 12 years ago

IMHO all US regulations that have the force of law should have to be passed by both houses of congress to be legal.

They do. House and Senate both have to approve, then comes the possible veto by the pres.

pdonis2• 12 years ago

He's talking about regulations made by executive branch agencies, not statutes. Take a look at the Federal Register:

https://www.federalregister.gov/

Everything in there is regulations that were never passed explicitly by Congress or signed by the President. Congress passes laws giving broad regulatory guidelines, and executive agencies then write the detailed regulations that actually matter. The FCC is one such agency.

One could argue (and I would not disagree) that this is not really what the people who wrote the US Constitution intended. But it's how the system currently works.

zanny• 12 years ago

I like how an industry that exists in its current state due to local monopoly grants and subsidized infrastructure deployment (and billions in taxpayer money for infrastructure never built) wants a "free market".

I'd love one too. I'm just wondering how you have a free market where market access requires digging up everyones front yards and roads. Almost like how "hmm, I want to start a rail / aerospace / automotive / etc) transport system of any kind. I want to build a better sewer system. Or water system. Or electrical grid. And all these industries require transports that go through private property.

And all of the other ones are considered common carrier infrastructure.

Maybe the real problem is that townships and such can dictate who can lay fiber cable. Would it be feasible for companies to run fiber to the home if they had to ask each private property holder to let them lay the lines in their yards? That doesn't happen now because townships et al would intervene and not let people do what they want with their land, even if you could dodge ever touching public property with a line deployment. I wonder how that would work.

Thing is, these assholes aren't suggesting anything like that. They just want monopoly power and extortion rights to hold back progress and innovation for generations while robbing people.

rayiner5• 12 years ago

I like how an industry that exists in its current state due to local monopoly grants and subsidized infrastructure deployment (and billions in taxpayer money for infrastructure never built) wants a "free market"

The vast majority of the existing fiber-coax cable networks were built with private money after exclusive cable franchises were made illegal in 1992.

vampirechicken• 12 years ago

Two questions: 1) Do you think the Democrats will not filibuster this bill in the Senate? 2) Do you think the President will sign it or veto it if it makes it to his desk?

GOP Bill Would Prohibit FCC From Reclassifying ISPs as Common Carriers

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