Topic: FCC Chairman Wheeler's Open Letter re: Net Neutrality (Read 1219 times)

Net "Neutrality" is government managed price controls and forced reduction of service quality, which will result in reduced investment in internet within the USA and slower speed for everyone, as well as increased regulation.
There is nothing good about this (unless you hate Americans being on line).

What does this have to do with Bitcoin?

"Expanding the FCC’s jurisdiction beyond activities that have a direct impact on infrastructure investment to encompass those that have a tangential impact on infrastructure investment represents a significant extension of the FCC’s power. Indeed, it potentially leaves the door open for the FCC to take measures aimed directly at the content and application industries—a prospect widely feared by advocates and critics of network neutrality alike."
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2511266

So Net Neutrality opens the Fed to regulate/throttle internet applications and content if they decide it is more fair.  Doing this of course requires deep inspection of all traffic, which as the new regulating authority, the FCC can mandate.

So money that could have been spent on faster networks, instead won't be, because no incentive.  Instead government will force the money to be spent on traffic inspection.

End result, slower and more expensive networks than today for everyone, and no way to go faster even if you want to pay for it.


Stupid people.   They fall for the "we need to prevent monopoly" arguments (there are already plenty of laws for this).  This new law has NOTHING to do with protecting small start-ups or innovation, and EVERYTHING to do with expansion of government power and surveillance.

The evidence is overwhelming for, not against this claim, especially if you take the example of the UK, (where presumably you are talking about Ofcom?).
I don't know everything there is to know about the regulatory environment of the UK, but the UK is perhaps the only greater surveillance state than the USA.  There are more surveillance camera's per person there than anywhere.
I do know that in the UK, there is a 'minimum quality' of service.  There is no prevention from selling faster networks, only that it be provided wholesale to others that also want to carry over the same network and do their own customer management.   This is somewhat less horrible, than the US proposals that prevent the tariff of QoS traffic entirely from the provider side.  That this technology has been available for about 20 years to business networks to use internally and allow their applications to work and preventing it on the internet damages the internet, it does not 'protect' it.

Second "Net Neutrality" does NOT exist in the UK regulatory environment, despite your imagination that it is already implemented. 

Third, the notion that some 'threat of commercial discrimination' justifies the mandate of actual commercial discrimination and the prevention of commercial sale of faster networks by government fiat is absurd.

The BIGGEST LIE of the net "neutrality" hucksters is that the sale of QoS networks where quality can be guaranteed for applications that require it somehow slows everyone else down.  You should be ashamed of yourself for propagating this nonsense.

People that have even a passing understanding of MPLS QoS packet prioritization technology or some experience with it know better.  To prevent the sale of these by some mythical claim of imagined anti-competitive activity (where there are already quite good laws to prevent this) is a smoke screen, and the apologists for this are simply uneducated sheep following some misguided notion of "fairness" to enforce abject unfairness and a theft of freedom.  So since this law and new regulatory authority are entirely unnecessary, and actually harmful to the development of the internst, why add them?

Substantiate your claims, especially in the face of overwhelming evidence that they are false, as evidenced by the UK where this system already exists and none of this is true.

Net "Neutrality" is government managed price controls and forced reduction of service quality, which will result in reduced investment in internet within the USA and slower speed for everyone, as well as increased regulation.

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler: This Is How We Will Ensure Net Neutrality


Federal Communication Commission(FCC) Chairman Tom Wheeler waits for a hearing at the FCC
December 11, 2014 in Washington, DC.  Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

After more than a decade of debate and a record-setting proceeding that attracted nearly 4 million public comments, the time to settle the Net Neutrality question has arrived. This week, I will circulate to the members of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) proposed new rules to preserve the internet as an open platform for innovation and free expression. This proposal is rooted in long-standing regulatory principles, marketplace experience, and public input received over the last several months.

Broadband network operators have an understandable motivation to manage their network to maximize their business interests. But their actions may not always be optimal for network users. The Congress gave the FCC broad authority to update its rules to reflect changes in technology and marketplace behavior in a way that protects consumers. Over the years, the Commission has used this authority to the public’s great benefit.

The internet wouldn’t have emerged as it did, for instance, if the FCC hadn’t mandated open access for network equipment in the late 1960s. Before then, AT&T prohibited anyone from attaching non-AT&T equipment to the network. The modems that enabled the internet were usable only because the FCC required the network to be open.

Companies such as AOL were able to grow in the early days of home computing because these modems gave them access to the open telephone network.

I personally learned the importance of open networks the hard way. In the mid-1980s I was president of a startup, NABU: The Home Computer Network. My company was using new technology to deliver high-speed data to home computers over cable television lines. Across town Steve Case was starting what became AOL. NABU was delivering service at the then-blazing speed of 1.5 megabits per second—hundreds of times faster than Case’s company. “We used to worry about you a lot,” Case told me years later.

But NABU went broke while AOL became very successful. Why that is highlights the fundamental problem with allowing networks to act as gatekeepers.

While delivering better service, NABU had to depend on cable television operators granting access to their systems. Steve Case was not only a brilliant entrepreneur, but he also had access to an unlimited number of customers nationwide who only had to attach a modem to their phone line to receive his service. The phone network was open whereas the cable networks were closed. End of story.

The phone network’s openness did not happen by accident, but by FCC rule. How we precisely deliver that kind of openness for America’s broadband networks has been the subject of a debate over the last several months.

Originally, I believed that the FCC could assure internet openness through a determination of “commercial reasonableness” under Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. While a recent court decision seemed to draw a roadmap for using this approach, I became concerned that this relatively new concept might, down the road, be interpreted to mean what is reasonable for commercial interests, not consumers.

That is why I am proposing that the FCC use its Title II authority to implement and enforce open internet protections.

Using this authority, I am submitting to my colleagues the strongest open internet protections ever proposed by the FCC. These enforceable, bright-line rules will ban paid prioritization, and the blocking and throttling of lawful content and services. I propose to fully apply—for the first time ever—those bright-line rules to mobile broadband. My proposal assures the rights of internet users to go where they want, when they want, and the rights of innovators to introduce new products without asking anyone’s permission.

All of this can be accomplished while encouraging investment in broadband networks. To preserve incentives for broadband operators to invest in their networks, my proposal will modernize Title II, tailoring it for the 21st century, in order to provide returns necessary to construct competitive networks. For example, there will be no rate regulation, no tariffs, no last-mile unbundling. Over the last 21 years, the wireless industry has invested almost $300 billion under similar rules, proving that modernized Title II regulation can encourage investment and competition.

Congress wisely gave the FCC the power to update its rules to keep pace with innovation. Under that authority my proposal includes a general conduct rule that can be used to stop new and novel threats to the internet. This means the action we take will be strong enough and flexible enough not only to deal with the realities of today, but also to establish ground rules for the as yet unimagined.

The internet must be fast, fair and open. That is the message I’ve heard from consumers and innovators across this nation. That is the principle that has enabled the internet to become an unprecedented platform for innovation and human expression. And that is the lesson I learned heading a tech startup at the dawn of the internet age. The proposal I present to the commission will ensure the internet remains open, now and in the future, for all Americans.