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Forums - Politics Discussion - The FCC repeals its net neutrality rules - The Washington Post

I am ashamed that Pai holds the label of 'libertarian'. I myself am libertarian, and see this as a corporate Ponzi scheme. Screw the FCC and anyone who thinks this may be ok.

As much as we don't want to, we MUST put trust in Congress, and if they fall short, it will not be well received.



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Why they couldn't change the bill, or write up a new one with the changes or add on's they felt were needed, I don't know, but that would have been better than flat out tossing the bill. Allowing for more freedom and more profits does make sense to me, in the long run and the big picture.

I guess I'm one of the few who MIGHT benefit from this, and not because I own their stocks or anything like that. If this truly leads to progress into bringing worthwhile and reliable high speed into rural area's like Pai wants, than it's a huge win. The Conservatives, mostly rural people, did vote for Trump, who apparently put Pai in place to make sure this went through, so using this to better the rural high speed infrastructure would make sense.

However, if these Corporations simply pocket the money, or use it to just give urban people even faster speed and more reliable service, than not so good. I don't understand why most people don't see what the FCC MAY be trying to do. Everyone agree's on net neutrality because they want everyone to be able to have equal rights on the internet. Yet there are tens of millions of people who can't even get high speed to be able to use many of these online tools, so what about equality and rights then? I don't see anybody, especially the media, making a stink over how it's not fair that there are still American's with no other choice but dial up. (I don't count satellite because the speed and reliability is mostly crap, is really costly for what you get, and usually has low data caps).

While I'm Canadian, this won't directly affect me, other than access to certain websites, maybe, we'll see. Otherwise, since we tend to follow the US a lot of the time, this may help to at least change the rules here to help bring high speed to rural area's.

5MB connection is the best I can get here, and the system is so overloaded, that the only time we ever get that speed is between midnight and 9am. On average, during the day, we get 2MB, and during peak hours we get 1MB.
My friend who lives a km away, only has access to wireless 1.5MB and pays more than we do for our 5MB. A km the other way, is a small town/village with 50 homes, and 2km farther is a town of 500 homes with 1GB fiber installed recently. The company that installed the fiber said they will not bring it any farther. The large company who's phone lines we use for DSL, won't upgrade either. They eventually were straight up with us and said it just doesn't make business sense for anyone, so too bad for us, take it or leave it.

As far as I'm concerned, if you have a 10MB-25MB connection or better, and believe in net neutrality, you should also be fighting to better the network as a whole. That doesn't seem to be a worry for anyone though. Just as long as they are aloud to continue using their awesome internet speeds to their advantage, that's all that matters apparently. Just imagine if all those rural farmers decided to sell their products from their own farm, instead of selling it to the middle man and taking a huge hit in terms of profits, just so that everyone can purchase that food and benefit with ease.

As for the blocking of access or high speed lanes, I don't necessarily agree, but if for some reason a deal can't be made that is a balance between all aspects of the internet, then I would rather drop net neutrality, again, only if the majority of the extra profits are used to bring everyone similar speeds, access, and reliability. Do I think that is really what's going to happen? Probably not, but if you don't give the system another chance, you won't know, unfortunately. If nothing changes over a year or two, then I'm all for net neutrality as it was, if not more regulated.



EricHiggin said:
Why they couldn't change the bill, or write up a new one with the changes or add on's they felt were needed, I don't know, but that would have been better than flat out tossing the bill. Allowing for more freedom and more profits does make sense to me, in the long run and the big picture.

I guess I'm one of the few who MIGHT benefit from this, and not because I own their stocks or anything like that. If this truly leads to progress into bringing worthwhile and reliable high speed into rural area's like Pai wants, than it's a huge win. The Conservatives, mostly rural people, did vote for Trump, who apparently put Pai in place to make sure this went through, so using this to better the rural high speed infrastructure would make sense.

However, if these Corporations simply pocket the money, or use it to just give urban people even faster speed and more reliable service, than not so good. I don't understand why most people don't see what the FCC MAY be trying to do. Everyone agree's on net neutrality because they want everyone to be able to have equal rights on the internet. Yet there are tens of millions of people who can't even get high speed to be able to use many of these online tools, so what about equality and rights then? I don't see anybody, especially the media, making a stink over how it's not fair that there are still American's with no other choice but dial up. (I don't count satellite because the speed and reliability is mostly crap, is really costly for what you get, and usually has low data caps).

While I'm Canadian, this won't directly affect me, other than access to certain websites, maybe, we'll see. Otherwise, since we tend to follow the US a lot of the time, this may help to at least change the rules here to help bring high speed to rural area's.

5MB connection is the best I can get here, and the system is so overloaded, that the only time we ever get that speed is between midnight and 9am. On average, during the day, we get 2MB, and during peak hours we get 1MB.
My friend who lives a km away, only has access to wireless 1.5MB and pays more than we do for our 5MB. A km the other way, is a small town/village with 50 homes, and 2km farther is a town of 500 homes with 1GB fiber installed recently. The company that installed the fiber said they will not bring it any farther. The large company who's phone lines we use for DSL, won't upgrade either. They eventually were straight up with us and said it just doesn't make business sense for anyone, so too bad for us, take it or leave it.

As far as I'm concerned, if you have a 10MB-25MB connection or better, and believe in net neutrality, you should also be fighting to better the network as a whole. That doesn't seem to be a worry for anyone though. Just as long as they are aloud to continue using their awesome internet speeds to their advantage, that's all that matters apparently. Just imagine if all those rural farmers decided to sell their products from their own farm, instead of selling it to the middle man and taking a huge hit in terms of profits, just so that everyone can purchase that food and benefit with ease.

As for the blocking of access or high speed lanes, I don't necessarily agree, but if for some reason a deal can't be made that is a balance between all aspects of the internet, then I would rather drop net neutrality, again, only if the majority of the extra profits are used to bring everyone similar speeds, access, and reliability. Do I think that is really what's going to happen? Probably not, but if you don't give the system another chance, you won't know, unfortunately. If nothing changes over a year or two, then I'm all for net neutrality as it was, if not more regulated.

I understand what you are saying in the sense of rural areas. Being from a farm state, many parts are isolated and have no great possibilities at a good internet connection.

The only problem I see is that this doesn't encourage big corporations to expand, but rather make big cash deals with internet companies like Google and force their consumers to pay more upfront to get better speeds.

I could be proven wrong and don't have a 100% vision on the topic, but I just don't see how this can benefit anyone but the big ISP's and corporations.



I saved all of my porn DVDs from the PS2 era for just such an emergency.



TH3-D0S3R said:
EricHiggin said:
Why they couldn't change the bill, or write up a new one with the changes or add on's they felt were needed, I don't know, but that would have been better than flat out tossing the bill. Allowing for more freedom and more profits does make sense to me, in the long run and the big picture.

I guess I'm one of the few who MIGHT benefit from this, and not because I own their stocks or anything like that. If this truly leads to progress into bringing worthwhile and reliable high speed into rural area's like Pai wants, than it's a huge win. The Conservatives, mostly rural people, did vote for Trump, who apparently put Pai in place to make sure this went through, so using this to better the rural high speed infrastructure would make sense.

However, if these Corporations simply pocket the money, or use it to just give urban people even faster speed and more reliable service, than not so good. I don't understand why most people don't see what the FCC MAY be trying to do. Everyone agree's on net neutrality because they want everyone to be able to have equal rights on the internet. Yet there are tens of millions of people who can't even get high speed to be able to use many of these online tools, so what about equality and rights then? I don't see anybody, especially the media, making a stink over how it's not fair that there are still American's with no other choice but dial up. (I don't count satellite because the speed and reliability is mostly crap, is really costly for what you get, and usually has low data caps).

While I'm Canadian, this won't directly affect me, other than access to certain websites, maybe, we'll see. Otherwise, since we tend to follow the US a lot of the time, this may help to at least change the rules here to help bring high speed to rural area's.

5MB connection is the best I can get here, and the system is so overloaded, that the only time we ever get that speed is between midnight and 9am. On average, during the day, we get 2MB, and during peak hours we get 1MB.
My friend who lives a km away, only has access to wireless 1.5MB and pays more than we do for our 5MB. A km the other way, is a small town/village with 50 homes, and 2km farther is a town of 500 homes with 1GB fiber installed recently. The company that installed the fiber said they will not bring it any farther. The large company who's phone lines we use for DSL, won't upgrade either. They eventually were straight up with us and said it just doesn't make business sense for anyone, so too bad for us, take it or leave it.

As far as I'm concerned, if you have a 10MB-25MB connection or better, and believe in net neutrality, you should also be fighting to better the network as a whole. That doesn't seem to be a worry for anyone though. Just as long as they are aloud to continue using their awesome internet speeds to their advantage, that's all that matters apparently. Just imagine if all those rural farmers decided to sell their products from their own farm, instead of selling it to the middle man and taking a huge hit in terms of profits, just so that everyone can purchase that food and benefit with ease.

As for the blocking of access or high speed lanes, I don't necessarily agree, but if for some reason a deal can't be made that is a balance between all aspects of the internet, then I would rather drop net neutrality, again, only if the majority of the extra profits are used to bring everyone similar speeds, access, and reliability. Do I think that is really what's going to happen? Probably not, but if you don't give the system another chance, you won't know, unfortunately. If nothing changes over a year or two, then I'm all for net neutrality as it was, if not more regulated.

I understand what you are saying in the sense of rural areas. Being from a farm state, many parts are isolated and have no great possibilities at a good internet connection.

The only problem I see is that this doesn't encourage big corporations to expand, but rather make big cash deals with internet companies like Google and force their consumers to pay more upfront to get better speeds.

I could be proven wrong and don't have a 100% vision on the topic, but I just don't see how this can benefit anyone but the big ISP's and corporations.

I'm afraid of that as well. Fixing the regulations as they were would have been much better, and maybe that's what will end up happening, but doing nothing clearly isn't going to solve the problem. What the right answer is exactly I don't know, but what was in place, did a few things well, but hurt many others.



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EricHiggin said:
TH3-D0S3R said:

I understand what you are saying in the sense of rural areas. Being from a farm state, many parts are isolated and have no great possibilities at a good internet connection.

The only problem I see is that this doesn't encourage big corporations to expand, but rather make big cash deals with internet companies like Google and force their consumers to pay more upfront to get better speeds.

I could be proven wrong and don't have a 100% vision on the topic, but I just don't see how this can benefit anyone but the big ISP's and corporations.

I'm afraid of that as well. Fixing the regulations as they were would have been much better, and maybe that's what will end up happening, but doing nothing clearly isn't going to solve the problem. What the right answer is exactly I don't know, but what was in place, did a few things well, but hurt many others.

I think if they would have kept the core elements of NN in act alongside expanding the web to better improve rural areas in a new bill/proposal, no one would be complaining. I know a friend of mine who lives in Alaska, and he talks about how even bad networks here are a million times better than his networks back home. There is a reason that BLOCKBUSTER of all places still exists in Alaska today.

However, where it stands now with no new proposal in sight, everyone has a right to be outraged.



TH3-D0S3R said:
EricHiggin said:

I'm afraid of that as well. Fixing the regulations as they were would have been much better, and maybe that's what will end up happening, but doing nothing clearly isn't going to solve the problem. What the right answer is exactly I don't know, but what was in place, did a few things well, but hurt many others.

I think if they would have kept the core elements of NN in act alongside expanding the web to better improve rural areas in a new bill/proposal, no one would be complaining. I know a friend of mine who lives in Alaska, and he talks about how even bad networks here are a million times better than his networks back home. There is a reason that BLOCKBUSTER of all places still exists in Alaska today.

However, where it stands now with no new proposal in sight, everyone has a right to be outraged.

I agree. Everyone should be mad. The problem is that NN wasn't well thought out to begin with. They clearly only paid attention to a few factors and didn't worry about how that might effect everything else. When I read about Google fiber being $70 a month or something like that, it makes me sick. I almost pay that much for a lousy "5MB" DSL connection. The prices are laid out poorly. People should be paying way more for faster speeds, so that profit can be used to expand the network. Now that the prices are so cheap, nobody is going to be ok with paying more. They need to however. That money also needs to go into the network and not into corporate piggy banks.



EricHiggin said:

The problem with this is that rural areas are aging and shrinking and infrastructure is very expensive to expand. Given the high costs and decreasing demand for high speed internet services, since younger people usually move into cities looking for work, I don't see major ISPs putting much investment into these communities. You may see smaller ISPs open shop but it's a difficult market to enter and major ISPs also have stakes in various other services along with the federal government which will continue to stifle competition. Pai said "let the free market handle it" while there is no free market.



Further reinforces what I've believed for quite some time, which is that corporations hold far more power than governments these days in many areas, at least here in the US.

Though this repeal doesn't sound as world ending apocalyptic as it sounds now that I've looked more into it. The biggest eye opening thing is that these Net Neutrality regulations were only put into place in early 2015 in the first place. And they seem to be more of a safeguard than anything else. 

Even if this goes all the way through the courts and is passed, it only means that corporate entities *in theory* could charge extra, offer internet "fast lanes" for larger fees, or slow down competitor websites or sites they wish to be blocked, but it doesn't mean it'll happen, and I'm sure they'll back off if it means a poor public image or lack of revenues. At the end of the day the free market has the final say. While it could potentially manifest itself into something more malevolent and anti-consumer in the long term, I don't see it having much immediate effect. The internet seemed to fare alright without the implementation of Net Neutrality in 2015, so I don't see how corporations will suddenly jump on this and exploit the situation now, especially with all the backlash.

At the end of the day it sounds like rather than the government holding more control of the internet it's corporations/internet providers holding more of the levers. One way or another some large entity will controls things I suppose. Just a matter of, do you prefer more of a "wild west" internet at the mercy of service providers/corporations or more regulations/safety nets by the government? While I'd prefer more control/regulation from the government rather than indifferent companies merely out to profit, I don't think this is as world-ending as I initially thought.

Last edited by DarthMetalliCube - on 14 December 2017

 

"We hold these truths to be self-evident - all men and women created by the, go-you know.. you know the thing!" - Joe Biden

Mar1217 said:

The irony in that is both downloads and installs are faster on PSN than XBL.