What the FCC's ruling means to you

So for the past year the battle has raged between the proponents of a free and open Internet and corporate interest.

It seems everyone had an opinion from podcasters to John Oliver and most of them rose in opposition to the flimsy pleas of poverty from the likes of multibillion dollar corporations with names like Time Warner and Comcast.

To listen to the ISP's you'd think that Net Neutrality or at least Netflix would be the death of them.  "They use 30% of the bandwidth!"  and "Somebody's got to pay for this"  All the time failing to mention the thousands of miles of "Dark Fiber" sitting unused for decades.   

And what of the promises not kept?  When AT&T threatened to curtail its services if the FCC changed its rules, the company seems to have conveniently forgotten its own obligations.  Time and time again they promise 100% broadband coverage if only they were allowed to gobble up another competitor or get another tax break.  They rarely deliver.  When it comes to ISP's you need to have a conversion chart to figure out what they mean by 100%

But that's all in the past now and and Wednesday's FCC's ruling makes a free and open Internet all but guaranteed, right? 

After all, the FCC has changed its rules and barring a successful legal challenge (unlikely as the changes follow court recommendations from their last go-around) ISP's are now just like your local power or water company.

Maybe...

Of course there'll be the requisite court battles waged by the ISP's where every "I" will be checked for the appropriate dot and every "T" scrutinized for the correct cross.  But in the end, it will happen.

But to you and me, it really doesn't matter.

The argument has been all about Internet Fast lanes with current rules allowing the "theoretical" throttling of services who can't "pay to play."  Treating ISP's like any other public utility puts an end to such a prioritization of services.  

Of course there's merit in that but for the average consumer it's the argument of an idealist.  Yes corporate interests should always take a back seat but if you're really expecting more competition and lower prices for your Internet services I'm afraid you're going to be disappointed.

Here's why...

ISP's are either regional monopolies or down-level customers of services from those monopolies.  That means no matter what, they still hold all the marbles ( or fibers ).  If Google comes to your town that's great but if AT&T, Verizon or Comcast have a lock on the right of way Google's out of luck.  

You need look no further than other regional utility providers currently under Title 2 for an example.   In many parts of the country your choice of a power company is dictated entirely by your geography.  Meaning the only competition consumers enjoy comes from a moving truck.  It also means that with little oversight, rates can be set on a whim.

It's true that there are no fast lanes in water and power utilities but there's also little to no competition.  Where you are dictates your service and your bill.

The same can now be said of ISP's with many areas only having one or two providers who more often than not have completely different offerings ultimately negating any equivalency.  Worse, due to the broken promises of coverage from companies like AT&T and Verizon, millions of customers are still lacking the barest minimum of broadband capability (now 25Mbps.)

So in the end, Netflix may come to you as quickly as Hulu but that's about the extent of the FCC's ruling.  You're still at the mercy of geography and you won't have much recourse when they jack up your Internet bill.

This was a ruling based largely on a "potential" injustice not a current one.

The FCC may have allowed us a moral victory but we have a lot further to go before consumers see any real benefit to their own bottom line.

How Net Neutrality made TWIT better...at least for a day

In the past few months there's no doubt that a majority of the articles in this blog have been critical of TWIT.  I'd hope that the criticism could be taken as constructive instead of denigrating but ego can get in the way.  There's no shortage of fanboy shills in any TWIT chatroom or forum discussion but you learn nothing from people who always agree with you.

That said, credit where credit is due.  To many, it's obvious what's wrong with TWIT these days but what about what's right?  Happily, every now and then the cream rises to the top and we get an experience that delivers on  the promise of what TWIT could be or at least what many thought it once was. 

This week's episode of Security Now provided one of those moments...

TWIT's weekly foray into the world of online security hosted by Steve Gibson (Security guru and creator of SpinRite) and Leo Laporte tries to unravel topics that can often leave even the most geeky of techies dazed and confused.

The average show presents complex security topics in a comprehensive yet understandable format with the aim of educating a wider audience.  Whether you're an IT pro or dyed in the wool techie, Steve's got your fix but even the casual viewer will find something of value here.

This week was a little different, however.  There was still in depth coverage of the latest security concerns but the program started with a discussion between Laporte, Gibson and guest Brett Glass best known for creating the world's first Wireless ISP (WISP) in Laramie Wyoming otherwise known as Lariat.

The conversation started out friendly enough with the topic being Net Neutrality but soon became a debate with Glass advocating for ISP's, Laporte for content producers and Gibson as the somewhat unwilling referee. 

For the most part It stayed civil but upon Glass's dissertation on the woes of high bandwidth use content producers "unfairly" burdening ISP's "limited" bandwidth Laporte rose in opposition.

From the podcast transcript...

BRETT: ...So the chairman of the FCC, Tom Wheeler, went ahead and proposed that, when they made some new rules to try to keep ISPs from misbehaving, they allow what's called "two-sided markets."  And immediately there was this tremendous hue and cry that you're hearing all over the Internet:  "Oh, no, that's creating a fast lane.  That's somehow unfair."  Most of this was actually the result of lobbying by Netflix and Google, who simply didn't want any of the money to flow back from them to the ISPs.  They wanted to keep it all.  And so when you hear people talking about that, that's, you know, a lot of it is due to the publicity campaigns by the content providers that want to keep more of the total money that the customer is paying. 

STEVE:  That does make a lot of sense, Brett.

LEO:  Not to me.  But I'd like to jump in.  It makes no sense at all.

BRETT:  Please.

LEO:  What you're saying is of course you want to make more money.  I don't blame you.  That's exactly what Comcast wants to do, and so does Google, and everybody else wants to make more money.  What doesn't make sense is for you to undercharge and then draw more money from the provider.  You need to charge what your service costs you.  And the problem is not Netflix, which can afford it, or Google, which could afford it, but TWiT, which can't afford it.

So what you're telling me is that, if I wanted access, and your customers were downloading a lot of TWiT, I'd have to give you some money.  That's not how the Internet was designed, Brett.  You know that perfectly well.  It was never designed for edge providers to pay Internet service providers.  You're a utility.  You provide a utility.  It's as if the water company says, well, you're drinking an awful lot of water.  We're going to have to figure out some way to get some money from the reservoir.  Your job is to provide free access to the Internet.  Why is that not your job?

And with that we were off to the races...

 

Everyone likes a good debate but this wasn't about the conflict between two obviously opposing viewpoints.  

To be clear, I wasn't looking for the podcast version of some Jerry Springer chair throwing exchange.  Rather it was about that one delicious moment where Laporte elevated TWIT's content above the mediocrity viewers have been subjected to in recent months.  Anyone watching would have seen Laporte advocating not only for himself but his viewers.

Glass' presentation, on the other hand, ultimately made him look like an industry shill and Laporte was having none of it.  Glass' ridiculous assertion of the "suffering" of ISP's at the hands of the likes of Netflix held no water. 

Perhaps Laporte did a little research on Glass prior to the show.  A quick search found almost the same arguments from Glass in a forum discussion about Time Warner abandoning usage caps in 2009.   

Watch the video below and see if you agree that this was a splendid example of the kind of programming that we need to see more of on TWIT.

Net Neutrality loses its appeal and so do you...

Originally published on Kupeesh!

Who owns the Internet?

Apparently it isn't you at least so far as the latest rulings on Net Neutrality go...

With phrases flying around like "commercially reasonable" and "competitively threatening" one has to wonder if the free and open Internet is soon to be relegated to the status of those quirky public access channels you used to see on cable.

Biker Billy (legendary public access star) may have cooked with fire but he never had the opportunity to set the airwaves ablaze like Discovery channel's American Chopper.  He just didn't have the access to a bigger audience.

Which is exactly the scenario the Internet is facing.

The latest development in the battle for an unhindered Internet experience finds F.C.C. chairman (and former telecom industry lobbyist) Tom Wheeler at the center of the storm.  Coming after his bid to codify Net Neutrality under the F.C.C. umbrella was rebuffed by a Federal appeals court in January, Wheeler's latest olive branch appears to be anything but.

In the latest set of proposed rules, broadband providers like Comcast and Verizon would have the right to prioritize Internet traffic from those who pay for the privilege over those who don't.

Now, If you're someone who gets their news from the New York times,  your movies from Netflix and only plays games on your XBOX then you probably don't care.

But you should, here's why...

At its core, the primary argument against these new rules swirls around the concept of "commercially reasonable."  A term invented by the F.C.C. but so poorly defined that the agency will spend the next few months trying to come up with a definition.  The popular consensus is that it lies somewhere between a toll bridge and extortion.

Not only does the possibility (if not outright probability) exist for smaller content providers to be crowded out by deeper pockets but consumers could be in for sticker shock as content providers try to recover priority access fees.

Netflix and Hulu are going to get a lot more expensive...

On its face Wheeler appears to be trying to please everybody but his history as an ardent supporter of telecom industry deregulation makes such overtures suspect.

In January, the F.C.C. was told by the Federal court in no uncertain terms that the Internet was not currently considered a critical utility like water or electricity and therefore couldn't be regulated in the same manner.

Which was probably music to the old telecom lobbyist's ears.  Wheeler's statements this week have amounted to little more than lip service to Net Neutrality.

In what appears to be an about face since the court's ruling (despite Wheeler's denials,) the F.C.C. now embraces regulation "along the lines of the court's decision."  Meaning that every challenge is met with that phrase.  So-called Fast lanes, as the F.C.C. refers to them, cite the ability of premium content providers like NetFlix or Amazon to prioritize their traffic.

For a fee...

To be clear, nobody is saying you have to pay if you want users to be able to access your content but there's nothing in the F.C.C.'s proposals that require anything more of an ISP than a promise to play nice and submit a few reports.

It might as well be the F.C.C.'s version of Chamberlin's 1938 Munich agreement.

With an edict handed down from the Federal courts, Wheeler is now free to move the F.C.C from a regulatory agency responsible for protecting the public interest to a service window for telecom industry lobbyists looking to cash in.