FCC Regulating the Internet

http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/02/25/republicans-defy-net-neutrality-ahead-of-fcc-vote The rules not passed were against net neutrality http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/25/technology/path-clears-for-net-neutrality-ahead-of-fcc-vote.html

"The F.C.C. plan would let the agency regulate Internet access as if it is a public good. It would follow the concept known as net neutrality or an open Internet, banning so-called paid prioritization — or fast lanes — for willing Internet content providers." Net neutrality is being upheld so far with the F.C.C. plan. So I don't know what you are complaining about. Sure, lots of greedy Republicans (who are paid off by telecommunications companies) oppose the plan and will fight it and may overturn it in the future. But for now everything looks ok.

The FCC aren't going to shut down any mini-sites or go against net neutrality. Companies such as At&t and Verizon wanted to impose "fast lanes" so companies could pay to allow their websites to be faster on these networks. Companies like Netflix stood up and said "That's blatantly unfair and anti-competitive and only hurts the consumer." The FCC is actually UPHOLDING net neutrality by saying ISP's can't impose "fast lanes" and they are also describing having "broadband" as having higher speeds. I think it's something like 25mb down, and 4-5 up? Something like that. Not only does this mean possible cheaper internet options for those receiving less than what is described as broadband now, it also means big companies with tons of money can't buy-out the internet. Oh I also forgot to mention that Verizon throttled sites that spoke out against them, such as Netflix, etc... making them sluggish and hard to use. They then blamed Netflix for this, even though it was proven to be Verizon throttling them by a simple turning on of a VPN. How anybody could support such blatant anti-competitive and anti-consumer actions is crazy. The FCC is doing great work with this decision, and it only preserves small sites like this one. Next I hope they ban data caps because those are crazy as well.

I am a network engineer for a tier 3 ISP/CLEC. I have been building the internet since I worked on Sprint's first coast to coast fiber network in the late 1990s. This needed to happen a long time ago. They also changed the speeds that are considered broadband because many Telco/ISPs were stifling growth because they got a tax break to provide broadband that is slower than most of the rest of the world. Japan had 20mbit VDSL the same time USA got 1-3mbit ADSL available to 60% of homes. The Internet has grown from being an academic platform, to a consumer platform, and is now a utility that we can do little without to run things. 80% of my customers ditched land line telephones and went to IP phones as it's cheaper. The Telco's are kind of freaking because they painted themselves into a corner and now overcharge cellular the same way they did land lines. The net neutrality thing revealed Telco's poor planning, especially Verizon, the worst of them all. Yes they have a huge network but is a poorly scaled hodge podge of 60 years of migration technology and is under constant service failures. All ISPs use a practice called overbooking. I have a 10gig pipe someplace but it is not going to be used at max capacity all the time so it makes cost sense to sell 40gigs of potential traffic to it and hope it does not max out too often to be noticed. That does not work so much anymore with all this ubiquitous streaming media and reliance on cloud storage feeding mobile devices 24/7. Google also did a 180 and won lawsuits against their own Google fiber customers to ban all bit torrent traffic of any kind at their discretion, no VPNs, IP-Phone, unless they were Google provided services or paid a premium for access. They used to criticize Comcast for doing exactly that in the past. Netflix paid for a X sized pipe via its data center provider who paid the Telco in turn for it, the customer paid for X size service too. They should be getting it but Telco now has to scramble to expand its limited capacity and wants to sucker the consumer or the business to pick up the tab. The CEO of Vz makes 50K a day before bonuses. They net profit billions a year. The expansion cost raising lie they told for years is now seen for the BS it really is. When it a was a consumer good the internet could be self regulating. Now that the Telcos can destroy businesses or affect the economy directly by via cost control they can not be trusted regulate themselves anymore. They never have incentive to do the customer right, only squeeze out as much profit as they can get away with. The internet is a utility now and needs to be managed as such. The NetFlix case raised urgency to finally get this done as the moment Vz got away with it all the other Telco ISPs were starting to do it. NetFlix would go out of business eventually from price hikes to pay the bribes or get spotty service.