Watch the FCC Net Neutrality Meeting Live: Open Internet Passes in 3-2 Vote.

a reply to: masqua

From what I took out of the decision reached today, it's a win for 'the little guy'.

Kind of, the little guy was just along for the ride.

The little guy was lucky that their was another Oligopoly in place that had a business model in tune with the consumer that took on the telecom behemoth and won for now.

Had the online behemoth Tech industry not had conflicting business models with the telecom industry this would have never happened and we would have lost net neutrality principles long ago to never be heard of again.

This was a battle of the titans , the little guys happened to be on the skirts of the winner and will see the benefits.

Don't get me wrong grass roots helped but without the lobbying power of the online tech industry, no amount of grass roots efforts or outcry from the general public could have stopped the telecom industry. Heck the Online Tech industry barely was able to do it.

a reply to: tothetenthpower

I get hosting for clients from OVH out in Canada. You really can't beat their deals here in the states. I don't understand all the details of why the price is so much cheaper with OVH than providers in the US. I get that OVH has economies of scale on their side, but you see this same thing happening with other countries continuously beating out the US in general in terms of offerings vs cost. Perhaps regulations... red tape makes up the bulk of the difference? ... or is it truly just greed? I don't get it.

a reply to: SkepticOverlord

I'm curious as to why you linked to a 4 page summary rather than the 300 page proposal itself.

I'm with SaturnFX on this one. It should be as simple as "no throttling". Its the other 299.9 pages that worries me.

a reply to: pl3bscheese

In Canada it's truly just greed.

3 major ISP's control all of the fiber access in Canada. They've come together, ( although they won't admit it) and colluded to keep prices higher, since nobody is there to compete with them. This is why Verizon was left out of coming to Canada in the last spectrum bid, because they would have destroyed the current pricing models of the big 3.

~Tenth

originally posted by: Bone75
a reply to: SkepticOverlord

I'm curious as to why you linked to a 4 page summary rather than the 300 page proposal itself.

I'm with SaturnFX on this one. It should be as simple as "no throttling". Its the other 299.9 pages that worries me.

Because the other 328 pages have been secret until the vote that just occurred.

Now, we will hopefully be able to see the whole thing.

originally posted by: tothetenthpower
a reply to: TonyS

We haven't been really, everything is the same as it was prior to the whole debacle. We have no fast lane, none of the ISP's here complain about it either. At least not enough for me to have noticed, and I worked in telecom for a lot of years.

The issue we have in Canada is cost, because of lack of competition. Canada pays some of the highest fees in the world from a dollar per Gigabit standpoint.

~Tenth

Thanks for the information. I have been worried about the cost aspect. The irony of all this is that it seems the intent is to make the Internet universally and equally accessible by all, but if the costs creep up, it will discourage internet usage or restrict it to the wealthy. But at this point, its impossible to parse through the BS to figure out what the real effect of this will be.

a reply to: greencmp

I'm the first person that says KEEP Gov't out of it because they screw everything they touch.

However, this is a little different for the following reasons.

1. Unlike other legislation this legislation was derived by competition and not by the gov't or by one OLIGOPOLY lobbying group.

The only reason this became an issue is because TWO OLIGOPOLY industry (Online Tech vs telecom) had opposing business models that impacted each other.

Luckily for the consumer one of the two Oligopoly business model (Online tech) was in tune with what is best for the consumer and what allowed the internet to flourish in the first place.

As a matter of fact the FCC and the Telecom industry initially worked hard with their revolving door between the FCC the the Telecom industry to squash net neutrality.

It wasn't till the other Oligopoly whos business model was more in tune with the consumer stepped in and prevented them both the FCC and the telecom from undoing net neutrality principles. This was done out of pure luck that two Oligopolies had opposing stances that impacted each of their business significantly.

2. Undoing net neutrality is already one of the worst things you can do to the internet. So what ever things creep out of this reclassification will likely not make the internet any worse.

3. The telecom industry is NOT a free market place with competition, its a fixed market place and giving further control to an already hated industry by its customer base is not in the best interest of the consumers.

4. The internet is not a commodity its an economy/marketplace and no corporation should be able to control both the consumers and the market place. A free market should be just that and not controlled by the gate keepers. Without legislation the gatekeepers get to pick the winners and the looser.

5. Reclassification can help create competition by making it easier for new competition to get access to existing infrastructure.

Google has suggested that net neutrality rules could encourage investment on its part, because such rules may open up access to the telephone infrastructure used by its competitors — dramatically lowering the costs of installing fiber service throughout the country.

a reply to: SkepticOverlord

I read what you posted from the FCC.

How do you see this affecting consumer cost of access? Will this necessarily cause prices to increase? Or do you see mechanisms in place to constrain costs?

Not only does the FCC ruling excite me, so does the statement that Google will rollout their fiber network faster. As soon as Google comes to my area, I'm signing with them.

originally posted by: interupt42
a reply to: greencmp

I'm the first person that says KEEP Gov't out of it because they screw everything they touch.

However, this is a little different for the following reasons.

1. Unlike other legislation this legislation was derived by competition and not by the gov't or by one OLIGOPOLY lobbying group.

The only reason this became an issue is because TWO OLIGOPOLY industry (Online Tech vs telecom) had opposing business models that impacted each other.

Luckily for the consumer one of the two Oligopoly business model (Online tech) was in tune with what is best for the consumer and what allowed the internet to flourish in the first place.

2. Undoing net neutrality is already one of the worst things you can do to the internet. So what ever things creep out of this reclassification will likely not make the internet any worse.

3. The telecom industry is NOT a free market place with competition, its a fixed market place and giving further control to an already hated industry by its customer base is not in the best interest of the consumers.

4. The internet is not a commodity its an economy/marketplace and no corporation should be able to control both the consumers and the market place. A free market should be just that and not controlled by the gate keepers. Without legislation the gatekeepers get to pick the winners and the looser.

5. Reclassification can help create competition by making it easier for new competition to get access to existing infrastructure.

Google has suggested that net neutrality rules could encourage investment on its part, because such rules may open up access to the telephone infrastructure used by its competitors — dramatically lowering the costs of installing fiber service throughout the country.

That is the popular narrative.

I've tried following this topic, but don't have the technical knowledge to understand either side of this argument. So, I'll try a different angle. Almost every time our Government promises to protect us or our freedoms....BEWARE....just consider The Patriot Act, Obama-Care, NDAA,Operation Choke-Point and now the FCC steps out to protect our 1st Amendment rights...

I'm also curious as to why Netflix got throttled in the first place. I understand that it came down to either pay up or get throttled, but what I want to know is why the ISP's decided to make Netflix pay more than everyone else. Was it simply greed or was there a legitimate reason for it?

originally posted by: SkepticOverlord

originally posted by: smarterthanyou
I'm worried about the effects on ISP's and how it will affect consumer usage.

In theory: no effect because ISP's currently enjoy a 97% profit margin on broadband services to consumers.

I don't buy that 97% profit margin BS.

The “97 percent margin” assumes cable infrastructure materializes out of thin air, ready for broadband use and requiring no upgrades. It’s another misleading statistic all too easily accepted by those who insist that cable is a rapacious monopoly requiring public utility regulation.

Talbot cited the highly respected telecom analyst Craig Moffett as his source. But Moffett was referencing “gross profit margin” (GPM), a statistic that doesn’t take into account the infrastructure-heavy models of broadband providers. Talbot conveniently left out Moffett’s next sentence: in which he said that “this is not as crazy as it first appears,” and explained GPM’s pitfalls.

GPM is a simple equation: (Revenue – Cost of Goods Sold)/Revenue. It works well for calculating the profit margin on selling tangible goods like televisions and computers where the Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) is easy to calculate.

But GPM doesn’t properly evaluate the cost calculation for any business model dominated by high infrastructure costs, like broadband because the costs are not included.

The cable industry has invested nearly $200 billion in building networks since 1996, and it continues to invest more than $10 billion more each year in maintenance and upgrades. Yet cable’s COGS takes into account only the much lower day-to-day costs of running the network as opposed to building it. This produces GPMs that make cable companies’ profits look artificially high.

GPMs exaggerate broadband profits in a second, subtler way. Cable companies provide not only broadband but voice and video services as well–over the same networks. Many of their costs, such as network maintenance and customer service, can’t be broken down by service. These costs are thus considered operating costs for the entire business, and likely were left out of the equation when determining the gross profit of providing broadband services alone. This, again, overstates the margin of revenue over costs.

“Return on invested capital” (ROIC) paints a much more accurate picture of how the cable industry is performing. Unlike the gross profit numbers, ROIC actually attempts to incorporate long-term investment in infrastructure, giving a better sense of how a company is using its money to generate returns.

Using ROIC, we find that until very recently cable companies were earning small returns, still trying to recover their colossal initial investments. It often takes years of positive profits for these companies to make up for that initial investment and start seeing a return. So, what may appear to be a massive annual profit using GPM is really just recoupment of a tiny piece of past costs. Returns for cable companies range from negative to quite small.

Comcast, supposedly the greatest cable monopolist, has averaged just a 4.5% ROIC over the last five years. Time Warner Cable’s 5-year average is -1.3%. Compare those with Apple (32%) or Google (16.1%).

If cable companies were really making 97% profit, they would be among the most profitable businesses in history. Other companies and investors—sitting on huge stores of cash today—would be rushing to compete with cable, or simply funding the expansion of Verizon and AT&T’s fiber networks.

I'm no ISP apologist by any means, but I just don't see net neutrality being a good thing. Of course everyone is entitled to their opinion but I feel those praising it today are going to be regretting it in the near future. I see worse service and higher prices coming.

a reply to: TonyS

How do you see this affecting consumer cost of access? Will this necessarily cause prices to increase? Or do you see mechanisms in place to constrain costs?

I now you didn't ask me the question but if I may also answer.

Telecom access cost is really driven by the lack of competition in the industry more than anything else.

Google fiber [1GB up and down] is able to provide 100x the speed up and down with no caps or any throttling for 70 bucks a month while I pay $80 for 50 mb a month.

The markets that google fiber has gone into has caused att ,comcast and verizon to compete and provide comparable service. Ofcourse they are struggling because Google blind sided them and they have inadequate outdated infrastructure. Att just announced that they plan to provide the same speeds for around the same price as google , but with some caveats of course.

Will they use this as an excuse to charge more, most likely. However, they already raise their rates at will for as much as they want because they don't have any competition.


So the only thing that is really causing them to raise their prices is lack of competition and greed. No matter the outcome of the ruling today your prices would have gone up anyways. However, now as a reclassification it could allow for the newer ISP [google fiber] to expand by getting easier access to run lines.

a reply to: Bone75

I'm also curious as to why Netflix got throttled in the first place. I understand that it came down to either pay up or get throttled, but what I want to know is why the ISP's decided to make Netflix pay more than everyone else. Was it simply greed or was there a legitimate reason for it?

Set a new expectation and at the time youtube and netflix were some of the biggest users of bandwidth on the internet due to video streaming.

a reply to: conspiracytheoristIAM

see my previous post:
www.abovetopsecret.com...

a reply to: Bone75

Netflix accounts for a little over 40% of all network traffic in the US during peak hours. The ISP's were stating that Netflix had to pay to play, because their service was causing bottlenecks and slow downs across the network, due to a large portion of the traffic being dedicated to one single service.

This is not Netflix' problem. The ISP's are responsible for their own networks, capacity etc. They were just mad that they were being FORCED to improve their networks to serve the customer need and they just didn't want to pay for it.

~Tenth

a reply to: Bone75

Because the telecom companies were losing valuable ad revenue to people on Netflix not watching commercials.

Here is a good explanation for the average layman.



This guy gets it.

a reply to: tothetenthpower

3 major ISP's control all of the fiber access in Canada. They've come together, ( although they won't admit it) and colluded to keep prices higher, since nobody is there to compete with them.

Telecom, Energy, and banking are the most common oligopolies found in the world.