Gee, Bert, you responded to every one of my questions except this one:
"With all of the hand-wringing over Chairman Pai's action, it's a wonder the
internet ever made it to 2015 in the first place."
Hmm.
John
----- Original Message -----
From: "Manfredi, Albert E" <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, January 26, 2018 9:23 PM
Subject: [opendtv] Re: Multichannel News: New York Governor Mandates Net
Neutrality in Contracts
John Shutt wrote:
No, Bert. What the FCC did in 2015 was to act unilaterally to SET
policy rather than implement it.
Not true. That policy had been in effect ever since 1906. The FCC, in 2015, merely fixed an anomaly that was initially created ca. 2000, when ISPs were no longer reached over Title II telephone lines (which permitted a huge amount of choice), and *instead* had become local monopolies.
Even Michael Powell knew that Internet service needed to be neutral, when he ran up against the Vonage case. So here was a case where the old shortcut, no need to regulate ISPs when there was ample competition, came home to roost. Now there was no competition, and the problems began. Everyone saw this, except the extremists. Sorry, John, but that's how it happened.
Chairman Pai, who was on the board at the time of this 'activist' action
by the FCC Commission, simply 'unrung' the bell that Chairman Wheeler
took upon himself, with explicit direction from the executive branch, rang.
Commissioner Pai, at that time, sounded like, WAY out to lunch, in almost everything he said. He had no clue. For example, to claim that Congress had to classify ISP service, when originally the *FCC* had classified it, was simply a lie. There was nothing "activist" or "overreaching" about any of it. Just lies from that Commissioner. At the time, though, I thought he was just being a typically contrarian minority Commissioner. Now he's Chairman. He has to do his freakin' JOB.
If Net Neutrality is vital to the operation of the internet, then Congress
and the President need to set policy for the FCC to implement. To date,
Congress has not.
Internet service is a telecom service, John. It's not frivolous cable TV. Internet service had ALWAYS been described as "advanced telecom service." I already quoted all of that. And telecom service had *always* been mandated to be neutral. The only issue was that the FCC had misclassified ISP service, during the dialup era, as I explained and quoted already, because they saw it as just something else one could reach over the telephone line. No longer the case, with broadband.
That anomaly had to be corrected. The courts explained to the FCC *how* that anomaly had to be corrected. Surely, you're not going to suggest that Internet service does NOT need to be neutral? Right? Many millions of people wrote to the FCC to make damned sure Internet service be mandated neutral.
The monopoly service, in the dialup era, was the telco link. That was already regulated under Title II. With broadband, the monopoly service became the ISP. The FCC did exactly the right thing, to correctly classify a telecom service as a telecom service. Practically EVERYBODY understood that, John.
Please be careful with political name-calling, Bert.
Sorry, John, but pig-headed, stubborn extremists, who won't do the job they are supposed to do, need to be called out in no uncertain terms. If the shoe fits ...
Bert
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