Posted on 11/22/2014 7:27:35 AM PST by Kaslin
Ready to pay more for Internet access? Me neither.
Unfortunately, that’s exactly what we can expect under the “net neutrality” rules being pushed by President Obama.
“Net neutrality” may sound harmless, but there would be nothing neutral about this change. Currently, broadband providers such as Verizon, AT&T and Comcast are treated differently than traditional telephone companies and electric utilities. They aren’t subject to “common-carrier” rules that prohibit them from varying rates and services.
In short, they can offer -- and charge -- what they want. That’s good for consumers, because it means that in order to compete, they’re always trying to win and keep customers by offering better, faster service at lower rates.
That would change with the advent of “net neutrality.” Under the plan that President Obama is urging the Federal Communications Commission to adopt,Internet providers would be declared common carriers providing “telecommunications services.” Which would leave the FCC free to regulate them.
One result: The providers would have to pay a part of their Internet revenue to the FCC’s “Universal Service Fund,” which provides subsidies for Internet service. This fee is set at 16.1 percent of revenue, or about $7 per subscriber per month. Former FCC Commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Rothcalls it “perhaps the largest, one-time tax increase on the Internet.”
It may surprise you to learn that two of the current FCC commissioners oppose the president’s plan. According to one of them, Mike O’Reilly, the FCC is planning a “spending spree” with these new USF subsidies. Bad enough our Internet access would become more expensive -- we’d have to fund more waste at a government agency, too?
As regulation expert James Gattuso notes, this push for net neutrality comes at an ironic time: Congress is considering a renewal of its moratorium on state Internet taxes. But, he says, the FCC has no plans to ask Congress to vote on this matter. Why? It claims it has the power to move forward without legislative approval.
But net neutrality would mean more than a rate hike (which will naturally hit lower-income Americans the hardest). Coming under the FCC’s regulatory thumb would harm innovation and make broadband companies wary of investing in new ways to provide better, faster and cheaper service.
This isn’t just conjecture. An example of it came quite recently, in fact, when AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson spoke of how the company’s plans to invest in fiber-optic networks in up to 100 cities would change under President Obama’s proposal.
The fiber optic rollouts “are long-term investments,” Stephenson said on Fox Business Network. “And we have to ask under what rules will those be regulated in two or three years. Until we have some clarity, we’ll have to slow ourselves down and we’ll have to pause and have some idea of what these rules look like in two or three years.”
I can’t think of a better phrase to describe the effect of regulation on innovation: “We’ll have to slow ourselves down.” The fact is, we shouldn’t have to do anything of the sort. These companies should feel they can invest freely in the kinds of services that make life better for their customers. But under net neutrality, that won’t be possible.
It simply makes no sense to yoke the Internet of 2014 to any portion of the Communications Act of 1934. As Erik Telford of the Franklin Center for Government & Public Integrity recently wrote in The Hill, “Given how much the Internet has revolutionized our lives in just the past ten years, it’s absurd to think that an 80-year-old law will ensure the best service to consumers going forward.”
So let’s see: We’d pay more … for less. Sounds like a government plan, all right.
Here’s a better idea: Leave “net neutrality” junked on the shoulder of the information superhighway instead.
If you like your plan you can keep it.
If you like the Affordable Care Act then you are going to just love Net Neutrality.
Hey America! How’s that hope and change working out for ya?! Rub some “white guilt” on it! You’ll feel a lot better.
Sure thing Ed. Not Commiecast. Sky's the limit with them.
+3
And I bet it won’t stop at taxing it either. They will have the IRS sniffing every transaction online to see where you spend your money. If they see too many people buying luxury items or it appears they have too much expendable income, audit time or time to raise taxes again. Right wing news outlets. Oops sorry not why sure your Internet is down around election time but I’m sure it will be back up in a few days. Oh I see you like porn there. BTW I have your wife’s email address. Be a shame if you don’t comply. Some “hacker” must have taken screenshots of your screen and accidentally forwarded them to her email address. Oh you sent online payments and your mortgage ompany never received them and now you have late fees? So sorry.
I don’t think giving the Feds they keys to the Internet is a good thing at all. They already have everyone’s nuts in a vice grip with Obamacare collecting data from them coupled with the NSA’s surveillance machinge. We saw what he’s done with the information on controlling SCOTUS and Congress. No he doesn’t need to control the Internet too.
ugh, no. That is NOT good for consumers. I pay for service that includes a quoted speed up and a quoted sped down, but in fine print the telcos will tell you to pound sand if you do not get these speeds - but that is another issue all together.
What consumers want, though the GOP won't tell them, is for the telcos to take you to the site or service you attempt to access through this telco connect! that you are paying for.
But what the telcos want to do, is deny you what you want by atificially slowing down your speeds, or downright blocking the site - because it competes with their own service. The telcos want to read EVERY BIT/BYTE you access on the Internet, and punish you for accessing sites and services that compete with their own.
the Internet was born, has grown up with, and exploded in usefulness ALL BASED UPON the free flow of data, and NOT discriminating upon what the end user wants.
Net neutrality is about keeping this same open protocol in place so that big and small businesses alike can compete in cyberspace, What the telcos and the politicians who get the fattest telco payments are somehow try to convince you is that a small company attempting to compete with the major telcos SHOULD get squashed like a bug by the very same telcos. That competition against the telcos is and ever shall be verboten. How do you reconcile the notion that the telcos will limit your choices and block your free access to information and services?
this is being played out by the telcos and the GOP as the government telling telcos the content they can have on their internet service, when in fact it is the opposite, it is telling the telcos that THEY CANNOT LIMIT CONSUMER CHOICE. It's pure scare tactics because the telcos do not want you to dig deeper into what is really at stake - and that is forbidding the telcos from screwing over their customers by limiting consumer choice.
go ahead telco folks, tell me ANYWHERE I am incorrect. Sure, you'll make up lots of counter arguments, but NONE will refute what I have stated above. In this case, the "dumb voters" is being counted on by the GOP, because they will give you NOTHING but the most simple of arguments - "the government is bad". Look past that people, please!!! Become MORE educated about THIS issue.
bump
Also, “regulation” is a good hook for ensuring that “lawful interception” remains in place.
NOW it can be governed IN THE HOME.
After all ... it's for the chi'run !
:See how well it works ?
Why don't we just make High speed the law of the land ... like digital TV ?
Five years ... tops ... and we've lost our means of communication ... 1st ammendment thwarted ... and we didn't need a Congressional convention.
I are a skuul borde d'rektah ... n'I bin suspishunin' this fer about too yeers.
Ping—I think the guy stays awake at night trying to figure new ways to tick us off!
Taxes for getting recorded who knew.
...And what Dark Chill
is gath’ring still
before the storm?
Different Germany
History repeats somehow
Different Germany
Afraid to know you now
Diff’rent somehow
I bet if you check you’ll find Comcast has a local government sponsored monopoly where you are.
If you like the Affordable Care Act then you are going to just love Net Neutrality.
Except when ISP's have been promising everything but delivering next to nothing - with the existing infrastructure and high amount of infrastructure. Then they make sure that consumers can't effectively use competing services. If there's any question on fees, then require a tax cut that matches the fee.
The ACA on the other hand, seeks to reduce competition, mandate centralization of services, and remove private insurance services completely.
The fiber optic rollouts “are long-term investments,” Stephenson said on Fox Business Network. “And we have to ask under what rules will those be regulated in two or three years. Until we have some clarity, we’ll have to slow ourselves down and we’ll have to pause and have some idea of what these rules look like in two or three years.”
These are the same rollouts that they've promised for ages but not delivered on time (if at all).
AT&T is just not entirely pleased at having to deal with a competing lobbying group and takes it out on the consumers. They're quite happy with the regulations that serve them but block competition.
I can’t think of a better phrase to describe the effect of regulation on innovation: “We’ll have to slow ourselves down.” The fact is, we shouldn’t have to do anything of the sort. These companies should feel they can invest freely in the kinds of services that make life better for their customers. But under net neutrality, that won’t be possible.
The problem is that such ISP's don't want competition, which would provide better services. They dont want to provide better Internet service, they just want a regulation-guaranteed revenue stream.
When the fence jumper ran into the White House and headed for the green room, one question to ask is not how big his knife was...but what did he leave behind?
Barry appointed Comcast lobbyist Tom Wheeler and gave him the green light to create a crisis by permitting fast lanes. Now Barry wants to fix his faux crisis by getting the government tentacles on the internet. Once that happens I expect to pay new ISP taxes so that Barry can subsidize ISP access for his favored voting blocks. Then it’s also just a matter of time before Barry decides that all of the salty talk and “hate speech” on the internet needs to be addressed, etc. etc. There’s no telling what crackpot Democrat agendas will be served once the internet becomes government regulated.
Doesn’t the problem with competing services really come down to the affordability of digging up the streets and running cables to each house? Most of us already have that and it is essentially always a monopoly system owned by the local cable company.
And, for most it is not fiber optic and it is therefore limited in capacity.
I want a Gigabyte per second service. I don’t believe Time-Warner could provide that at any price without a system-wide fiber optic Lube Job.
But if Comcast came in and proposed to build a parallel Fiber Optic system would they attract enough customers to justify the investment? I wonder. I’m doubtful.
So I wait for Time-Warner. And wait. And wait.
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