[opendtv] Re: Wheeler Makes It Official: It's Title II for ISPs | Multichannel

From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 8 Feb 2015 22:23:33 -0500
On Feb 8, 2015, at 9:13 PM, Manfredi, Albert E <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx> 
wrote:
> 
> How so? As I see it, instead, when/as/if real broadband access competition 
> emerges, e.g. with 5G cellular, then Title II would not be essential to 
> guarantee neutrality. But it won't hurt. Especially if the government resists 
> the urge to tax the life out of it (which resisting or urge Tom Wheeler 
> claims they are planning).

Did you note the fact that Wheeler plans to apply the new rules to both wired 
and wireless ISP services?

As I see it, the anti trust laws and legal system are fully capable of 
guaranteeing net neutrality without FCC regulation. And Congress could pre-empt 
the FCC. Any FCC rules will be challenged in court. 5g could be here by the 
time the rules are implemented. 

The FCC was told to unbundle cable and DBS STBs in 1995 - 20 years later...

> The telcos were correct that their PSTN was not optimized for packet-switched 
> data, Craig, but you're assuming that they were happy to not carry data. And 
> you would be wrong. The telcos began by designing schemes like ISDN, and then 
> Broadband ISDN with the ATM protocol to carry it, just for this reason. When 
> 56 Kbaud modems came on the scene, the wind got taken out of the sails of 
> plain old ISDN, but the telcos were busy developing xDSL. In effect, a 
> replacement for B-ISDN, which uses packet-switched IP instead of the original 
> circuit-oriented B-ISDN scheme. And ADSL too is carried over ATM, at least 
> until the central office.
> 
> All of this is strictly neutral.

By Title II regulation. And most of what you described was only available to 
businesses because of the high cost. Modems changed the picture, allowing 
consumers to get into e-mail and the early, but limited, World Wide Web. DSL 
was the first serious attempt to sell a data service to consumers - I was one 
of the first customers in Gainesville, several years before cable modems were 
available.
> 
> The cable companies got in the act too, even before ADSL, but there was no 
> neutrality issue yet. No conflict of interest at first, for the cablecos. Now 
> there is.

I believe your conflict of interest argument is misplaced. Clearly they are 
concerned about losing video subscribers, but they also know that OTT is the 
future - there is no longer a reason to take the interim step to  private IP 
data over the channels currently delivering linear video. They will move 
directly to open Internet distribution.
> 
> Remember the days of AOL and Compuserve? They had walled gardens, with access 
> to the Internet. But people had complete choice of ISP in the dial-up era, so 
> guess what happened? The walled gardens DISAPPEARED. No reason to pay extra 
> to be walled in, when the web was growing by leaps and bounds, and all you 
> needed from an ISP was neutral access to the Internet.

The walled gardens did disappear, but not because of dial up ISPs.

They failed because they were trying to force everyone to work with multiple 
walled gardens with proprietary tools for each. You can add the Time Warner 
Full Service Network to your list. HTML killed the walled gardens, as you could 
create a site that was accessible to anyone with Internet access.

And the open nature of the web - innovate then codify into standards - led to 
rapid innovation. You love Flash - a proprietary software toolbox; it is not a 
required standard, but filled a need. Once well defined, that need grew into 
HTML 5.
> 
> The problem today is that the neutrality of our ISPs is threatened. There is 
> hardly any competition between them, in a given location, UNLIKE the 
> situation when people became used to the neutrality of the Internet.

That threat is a canard to build the case for government regulation. I do not 
see any neutrality issues, and only a handful have ever been documented.

 Everything works fine, and I now get speeds that sometimes meet the new FCC 
definition of broadband (25 Mbps). At the moment (10 pm), however, I am only 
getting 12 Mbps. 

And Fast lanes would not change the neutrality of the standard service. They 
might guarantee that the service I am buying, which is now advertised as 40-50 
Mbps, would actually deliver that data rate, not the 12 Mbps I get when 
everyone in the neighborhood is watching Netflix.

Competition in terms of viable alternatives has nothing to do with net 
neutrality, UNLESS the only viable supplier starts blocking or slowing down 
traffic. Competition would be the BEST way to guarantee net neutrality. Title 
II regulation of ISP services would likely limit competition and raise prices.

>> In a competitive world, this is not a problem. Someone else will
>> offer a better, cheaper service. With regulated monopolies, the
>> potential for abuse increases.
> 
> Yes, but no disputes the obvious here, Craig. The problems happen when 
> competition for some specific service is not practical. So let's not go 
> around and around on this one too. As of now, ISP competition does not exist, 
> in short. It went away with broadband. And it may, or not, come back.

I would say that competition is limited. I buy data from Cox and AT&T Wireless. 
AT&T sends me a letter every week trying to get me to come back to DSL. 

Gainesville Regional Utilities offers 50 Mbps pipes to large apartment 
complexes in Gainesville. Others may get into the market, depending on what the 
FCC imposes.

Dish is buying up terrestrial spectrum, and the broadcast spectrum auction 
could have a huge impact on ISP competition.

Regards
Craig
 
 
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References:
- [opendtv] Re: Wheeler Makes It Official: It's Title II for ISPs | Multichannel
  - From: Manfredi, Albert E
[opendtv] Re: Wheeler Makes It Official: It's Title II for ISPs | Multichannel

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