re: FCC plans to vote to overturn U.S. net neutrality rules in December

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Either make it a utility or let the free market handle it.

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It should be a utility. Break up the infrastructure and content providers. Just like power and gas.

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Telling cable companies how to run their business is communism.

Either make it a utility or let the free market handle it.

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No it isn’t. There’s a reason a government can break up monopolies, and it’s to prevent them from terrifying 99.999% of society. That’s all the board members of the Big Six and the FCC: control. Once net neutrality is overturned, no one but these people very high up in the government and media will like it.

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Either make it a utility or let the free market handle it.

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Well the problem originates from the government. But until the cause of the problem is fixed, this is one of the rare instances of more regulation, in this case Net Neutrality, will actually help. In case anyone doesn't know....

Most people only have access to 2 or less broadband internet providers. Generally, these are your cable company and your legacy telephone company. Part of the reason for this is because local governments (Parishes cities, and even states) often protect this duopoly. They regulate it in such a manner that only the incumbent providers have a chance. And when a city decides to allow a new provider, it is often met with delays and lawsuits.

So without competition, the incumbent providers have no fear of abusing their position to extort more money out of either you their customer, or the content generators like Netflix.

As an example, Nashville was selected to be a Google Fiber city. AT&T and Comcast obviously didn't like this. So they abused existing line move regulations and drug out the process to months for each individual pole. Google had to apply for lines to be moved on each pole (Over 8,000) and had to wait months for each pole.

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As it stands, a new provider must wait on each existing provider to move its lines on a pole and make it ready for the new line. Google Fiber says the months-long process has slowed its rollout in Nashville. The One Touch Make Ready proposal, up for final vote on Sept. 20, would allow a contractor to move all existing providers' lines in one session.

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So now that Nashville has started the One Touch Make Ready policy, they are facing lawsuits from, you guessed it, AT&T.

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AT&T has sued Nashville to stop a new ordinance designed to accelerate the deployment of Google Fiber. The lawsuit (PDF) was filed in US District Court in Nashville yesterday, only two days after the Nashville Metro Council passed a “One Touch Make Ready” rule that gives new ISPs faster access to utility poles. The ordinance lets a single company make all of the necessary wire adjustments on utility poles itself, instead of having to wait for incumbent providers like AT&T and Comcast to send work crews to move their own wires. Google Fiber says it is waiting on AT&T and Comcast to move wires on nearly 8,000 poles.

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So until we can do something about the local sponsored duopolies, and foster actual competition, Net Neutrality is needed, or better yet regulate them as a utility. And the malicious abuse of regulations and the legal system like in Nashville need to be punished so harshly a scenario like that will never happen again. I hope the new LEO satellite constellations like One Web can absolutely obliterate the incumbent wireline providers.

In a perfect world, a conduit would be owned by the government, and the different providers would simply lease space to run their fiber through the conduit.

But in reality the FCC is going to ruin the internet and only when things get so bad that congress can't ignore the uproar will we see a permanent solution.