What Net Neutrality's Approval Will Mean For You

[Marshall Honorof]

Net neutrality's approval won't have much impact on the way you currently browse the Internet, but for most people, that's a very good thing.

What Net Neutrality's Approval Will Mean For You : Read more

 

[ltrav3nw00d]

Unless you can tell us what EXACTLY is in this 330 page FCC plan, all of this article is bogus and hypothetical. The title of this plan is designed to be all warm and fuzzy. It is made to pit you against the evil rich corporations who you feel are screwing you. The internet is NEUTRAL as it is now. You can get anything you want from anywhere at any time. What exactly is the issue here ? A faux Netflix issue who doesn't want to pay for the bandwidth/priority they want ? Does anyone recall the regulation of cable where we were PROMISED lower cable bills ?

 

[JulianResnik]

Cable companies need to be regulated. They're working together to prevent having to provide better service or lower prices. The internet in the US is extremely slow and over priced.

My cable/internet costs me $150/month (from Time Warner). Contrast with my other expenses:

- Gym ($11/month from Planet Fitness)
- Mobile Phone ($21/month from TMobile)
- Car insurance ($25/month from Insurance Panda)
- Groceries ($90/month for me)

Yes, that’s correct, my gym, cellphone, car insurance, and food COMBINED cost less than my TWC bill.

This will be a win for consumers by increasing competition and expanding infrastructure. Prices drop and speed increases. Profits drop. Aww.

 

[emperoram]

Regulation have NEVER made things cheaper you are an idiot if you believe that. mark my words this "plan" will allow the FCC to control content on the internet. how is controlling content on the internet helping make it free? this article as about what obummer has said what was in it, and how many times has what he said come true? obummer care "if you like your doctor you can keep them"
Oh and whatever happened to you get what you pay for, if you think cheap internet will good internet you are in idiot.

 

[leoscott]

The internet has done very well so far. Government regulation will just slow development and increase costs. Very bad idea.

 

[eodeo]

Here is how internet is not free right now and why it needs to be again:

https/www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpbOEoRrHyU

 

[d_kuhn]

Wow... a few F's in US History in the commenters. Regulation has indeed made many things cheaper... and is critical to controlling costs in a low or no competition markets like Internet Service Providing. Monopolies will inevitably abuse the power they have to lever the market in whatever direction they want to go... and ISP's are de-facto monopolies. We're already seeing ISP's do this as they monetize both sides of their pipe (and regardless of who pays the ISP... we the customers end up paying the bill), so while the government is inefficient and wasteful... sometimes even with those inefficiencies we're better off with their involvement.

 

[d_kuhn]

leoscott the internet has done well so far... but the ISP's have only been really abusing their monopoly positions for the last couple years - and they've been easing into it (leveraging concessions from big content providers). Failure to act now would be taken as tacit approval for their actions... and their overt monetizing behavior would really start to steamroll.

 

[jayracer7474]

"if you like your internet you can keep your internet...except we will be watching/monitoring you, adding regulatory cost to your bill, and likely slowing down growth/speed investments"

 

[rluker5]

Unless you can tell us what EXACTLY is in this 330 page FCC plan, all of this article is bogus and hypothetical. The title of this plan is designed to be all warm and fuzzy. It is made to pit you against the evil rich corporations who you feel are screwing you. The internet is NEUTRAL as it is now. You can get anything you want from anywhere at any time. What exactly is the issue here ? A faux Netflix issue who doesn't want to pay for the bandwidth/priority they want ? Does anyone recall the regulation of cable where we were PROMISED lower cable bills ?

I agree completely. If this were as simple as the selling points, then why does it have 329 extra pages and why do they have to keep it secret? And maybe some will pay less, but more will be paid. If you can afford cable you will probably pay more. So sorry, that's government today. Keep the giant middleman out. He has enough already.

 

[kiniku]

Another power grab by the government. The first "benefit" will be higher costs so that yet a new federal bureaucracy can created. New fees. Take a look at your cell phone bill today. Will there be Obama internet? You can count on it and the middle class will be funding it.
Only shortsighted millennials that believe government control will make things "fair" for their Netflix want this.

And the New York Times a "reputable outlet"? Why do people believe that government taking control of the private sector makes things better?

 

[Chris Droste]

what is this conservative shrill post hour? If you haven't taken notice, without FCC regulation, so far VZ, Comcast, TimeWarner and AT&T all have imposed caps, used throttling, raised rates and STILL refuse to expand and upgrade their back-end infrastructure in order to maximize profits. AT&T even used those costs as an excuse to why buying T-mobile would help them. In the end analysts not only concluded that AT&T was full of crap but that them flat out paying to finish their build-out was cheaper than buying T-mo. when the FCC waived their finger at VZ about throttling their customers (here's a clue. WE are the customer) VZ SUED the FCC and WON, contending that the FCC had no authority to STOP THEM FROM SCREWING US. You shrews freak out because you automatically think regulation = totalitarian state-controlled net a la china. since when has that ever been the case in the U.S.? Historically the "fees" that the Republicans tout will lead to even higher prices doesn't hold merit either, as it's been proven time and time again those fees had long since been paid and it's another way for "the private sector" to fleece your pockets.

here's another Newsflash for you idiots. The Internet was originally developed by the U.S.D.o.D. in the 60s as distributed, non-centralized communications network, specially setup so things like war or targeting a small number of locations could bring it down. the Internet was freaking created BY the government. if they really really really wanted to regulate it in a fashion that you all are SO worried about, they would have done that ages ago. The focus of these bills are designed around the concept that communications access, being deemed necessary for life in modern society, shall not be artificially imposed upon. That's it. The desire for modern tech companies, and the government currently, is to STOP the private sector from turning the all-you-can-surf internet buffet into piecemeal cable TV packaging where you have to pay to access specific types of content! Unless you can pull something out of that bill that specifically speaks contrary to that, you're just being a Corporate shill for Big Cable.

 

[Travis Hershberger]

This is a 3-letter government agency you're talking about, nothing you say can convince me they are not going to meddle in everything they shouldn't be and leave everything they should stamp out well enough alone.

 

[hammerstrike]

The reason why cable companies have a monopoly in local cable distribution is because the Gov't game them local monopolies to compensate them for the cost of laying the initial cable. Which is infrastructure that would have been deployed anyway, but instead of letting the market compete for it we got Gov't authorized monopolies and all the fun associated with that. So anyone looking for the Gov't to come in and "fix" this should examine previous "solutions" the Gov't came up with before getting to excited.

Not to mention the specific regulation the FCC is using, Title II of the 1934 (yes, 1934, or almost a hundred years ago, when vacuum tubes were cutting edge) Communications Act was last used to enforce the Ma Bell telephone system we had that, once again, gave local monopolies to the Baby Bell's in exchange for Gov't oversight. If you want a case study of unintended side effects and overall Government mismanagement of (what should be) a private industry this would be a great place to start. Long story stort, Title II resulted in the stagnation of the phone industry for decades and provided high prices, low-to-non-existent innovation and terrible customer service (they were the poster child for crappy customer service - "don't like us? Who cares, no other options").

Does anyone really thing that an industry as innovative and fast changing as the internet will be BETTER served having to adhere to STATIC LAWS, ONLY CHANGEABLE BY AN ACT OF CONGRESS, THAT WERE ISSUED IN 1934?

 

[10tacle]

And another thing Chris: "you're just being a Corporate shill for Big Cable." You might want to research how much the Comcast CEO, Comcast executives, and Comcast employees donated to Obama's 2012 campaign, chief.

 

[Marshall Honorof]

I have to admit, I am quite surprised by the number of commenters arguing AGAINST net neutrality. The U.S. government may not always have your best interests in mind, but believe me, the cable companies are hardly looking out for the everyday consumer, either. If net neutrality falls through, cable companies can (and, in all likelihood, will) charge you much more money to get the same good (or bad) service you enjoy (or suffer through) today, unless you use the services they want you to use, and visit the sites they want you to visit. There is absolutely no financial incentive to do otherwise, as cable companies have monopolies in many areas, and agreements amongst themselves where they don't.

As someone whose livelihood depends on concepts like net neutrality, I would urge you to think very carefully about how much your favorite Internet activities mean to you. If you don't want to pay through the nose for them (or see them taken away entirely), net neutrality is much better than the alternative.

 

[NNNo]

How can anyone who is for NN support what's going on when they are keeping the 300+ pages of regulations a secret until after it is passed!? People on Tom's complain about all of the NSA spying, etc., but somehow they're ok with and actually WANT that same government involved with regulating the internet.

Obama and other authoritarians want it done.... it should be stopped for that alone.

Please sign the petition to stop it...
http/action.politicalmedia.com/17314/constitutionally-say-no-to-fcc-internet-takeover/?ifr=820

Be open minded and watch this...
http/www.glennbeck.com/2015/02/17/stu-explains-why-net-neutrality-will-not-make-the-internet-better/

 

[Joe W]

Ether I am missing something or people don't understand how stuff works... I wouldn't be surprised if it is a bit of both.

Traffic shaping (some people call it throttling but it isn't really) has been around for a long long time. All it really does is take one type of data and gives it a higher priority over another. Like say email gets a higher priority than bit torrent traffic. Good great. Completely blocking that traffic i don't agree with but giving certain types of traffic a higher priority than other types i'm all for. I would hope that ISP's would make it known what traffic shaping they are doing though. I'm also against ISPs asking for content providers (netflix google, etc) to pay more for higher priority.

If you are tired of 'Big ISP' open up the ISP market for other companies to get in and provide your service... Oh wait.. hardly no one has the money to build the infrastructure.. maybe Google that is really about it. Don't think most people really under stand the cost of the ISP business. maybe back in the day when it was all cooper and T1's but now.. heh forget it.

 

[RaDiKaL_]

It really depends on what kind of regulations they apply to Traffic Shaping settings, without Traffic Shaping one would be unable to download a file while playing a game online, the spike issues would make it unplayable, same goes with any VoIP platform, I really don't think they are going to mess up with such an important feature, but at the very least the fact of imposing certain values and thresholds in a sensitive application could be enough to brake it entirely.

In the end I'd rather not having the government getting involved at all, if we leave this matter to the ISPs as it was before we the customers have different alternatives to choose from and the ISPs will adapt themselves to not lose its clients, whereas if the government sets standards and one of this values is not good then we are screwed up because all ISPs will be forced to apply it taking away from us the choice of the type of service we want to get.

 

[stingray69]

All of the reasons to enact this version of Net Neutrality revolve around potential problems which may not occur in the future. I will submit that these issues will never arise, because if Cable companies & ISPs cross the line, they know this is the response.

Now consider that this new government overreach will be absolutely permanent. We will be stuck with this and all of the unintended consequences . . . forever.

My belief is that there is no way that government monitoring of the internet will make it more free, unless you like free speech zones which have not gone away under Obama.