re: The Fight for Net Neutrality: Today

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Allowing a giant ISP to do whatever the frick they want is it's own form of protection.

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The wave of the future is wireless


we are already going wireless

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Abstract Financial and marketplace evidence demonstrates that the FCC’s 2015 Open Internet Order is an absolute success, accomplishing its stated goal of preserving and promoting the online ecosystem’s “virtuous cycle of investment.” ISP investments accelerated following the vote (e.g., aggregate capital expenditures by publicly traded ISPs have risen by more than 5 percent during the two-year period since the FCC’s February 2015 vote; investments in core network technology at cable companies during that same time period are up by more than 48 percent). Investments in the edge, including those by online video providers and edge computing firms, are up as well (e.g., capital expenditures by firms in the U.S. data-processing sector increased 26 percent in the year following the FCC’s order while there was just 4 percent growth in the year prior). More new U.S. “over-the-top” video services launched in the two years following the vote than in the seven years prior. Furthermore, the certainty the FCC’s action created spurred the entry of numerous pay-TV full replacement providers, with vertical carriers such as AT&T now distributing (

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Lol. You don't understand basic economics.

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It regulates it as a utility with as much force as the govt can regulate.

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In the long run, it will not be good for consumers

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We've heard the arguments and hypotheticals that could happen if Net Neutrality is done away with. Provide us with some examples or hypotheticals that show the consumer will be harmed if the current structure remains in place.

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The public-utility regulations, dating back to the 1930s, that the FCC dusted off and applied to the Internet are entirely inappropriate for promoting competition and innovation and encouraging investment. Designed for controlling the old Ma Bell monopoly, these old-fashioned utility regulations have long been irrelevant but have been given new life under the Open Internet Order.

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We've heard the arguments and hypotheticals that could happen if Net Neutrality is done away with.

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1930s regulations will hurt small business

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The public-utility regulations, dating back to the 1930s, that the FCC dusted off and applied to the Internet are entirely inappropriate for promoting competition and innovation and encouraging investment. Designed for controlling the old Ma Bell monopoly, these old-fashioned utility regulations have long been irrelevant but have been given new life under the Open Internet Order.

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Telephone service had begun crossing state lines by this time in 1934, and a unified body for regulating it and the companies that provided it (which were indeed acknowledged monopolies) was called for: hence, the FCC. And Title II is the part of the law that gives the agency authority over common carriers providing interstate or foreign communications services.

The FCC and the 1934 act were not solely created to break up Ma Bell or AT&T; it’s a major law that extended existing and working federal rules for interstate commerce to an industry whose growth necessitated it. Of course it would be silly to apply those exact same rules to a vastly different era — that’s why we had the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which extensively modernized the original with new definitions and rules.

Notably, no one seems to complain about all the other businesses, including some broadband connections and mobile services, that were governed under Title II before the 2015 order and will continue to be so should it be rolled back. Apparently depression-era monopoly rules are just fine for those.

It’s also worth mentioning here that if people are really afraid of broadband providers being governed by anti-monopoly authorities from the early 20th century, that is a precise description of the FTC, a bona-fide antitrust body established in 1914, and the agency to which regulatory authority would return should the FCC be relieved of it.

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