Comments on: Net Neutrality Regulations Coming

By: Brett Glass

Brett Glass — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 16:56:13 +0000

The thing that is of the greatest concern about the new regulations proposed by Chairman Genachowski is that they are based upon a shaky and flawed foundation. The FCC’s original “four principles” were not based on the results of any data gathering or fact-finding process (they didn’t need to be, because they were presented as not being enforceable). They are also now also several years old, and the landscape has changed greatly since that time. They further failed to take into account many contingencies. Shouldn’t the new FCC gather data and start afresh, rather than assuming that this old, poorly researched language should be enacted, verbatim, as rules?

When the Chairman was confirmed, and again at last month’s Congressional oversight hearing, he pledged that the FCC would be “data-driven” and would only regulate when the data showed that markets did not work. In this spirit, perhaps the Commission should issue an NOI (Notice of Inquiry) rather than an NPRM (Notice of Proposed Rule Making) at its October 22nd meeting. An NOI would likely be approved by a unanimous vote (as opposed to an NPRM, which is likely to be contentious) and would allow new data to be gathered and new facts to be considered before any rules were drafted (if, in fact, any were needed at all). It would also conform to the wishes of Congress, from which the FCC derives its authority. And it would allow time for the data from broadband mapping projects to arrive, giving a much better picture of the competitive landscape. There’s still half a month before the October 22nd meeting; I hope that the Chairman will consider making this change to ensure that any rules that do get enacted are fair and based on actual fact-finding rather than the unverified assertions of corporate lobbyists.

By: Mike Nelson

Mike Nelson — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 03:28:10 +0000

And, of course good ol’ Comcast is right in the middle of it.
How the Telcos must be peeing their pants laughing at the regulatory morass Comcast is walking into.

By: Mike Nelson

Mike Nelson — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 03:26:06 +0000

So, now, the current ad hoc rules are good enough? Snort!
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/09/fcc-going-schizo-on-net-neutrality-rules/

By: Max

Max — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 18:00:19 +0000

Was it just me, or can the entire speech be summarized as a bad mix of techcrunch reporting and something like “Unicorns! Faeries! Magic! Woo!”

I guess we’ll have to wait to see if this is another underwhelming Obama Admin Kool aid speech followed by vague inaction which will be followed by “deer in the headlights” policy making… Personally I’m hoping for a revamp of the regulatory structure since it looks like data networks will be the carrier of both “Information services” and “Telecommunications services”, but that seems to make too much sense.

Perhaps the easiest way to get around the issue would to give the neuts around $250 Million to actually go build a network to see if they can do better than what exists… It would certainly be entertaining:

“Neutrizon: A Buggy (but Neutral!) Network Powered by it’s own sense of self satisfaction”

How much would you bet that their best (and only) customers would be spammers?

~Max

By: Mike Nelson

Mike Nelson — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 16:56:55 +0000

If the neuts have their way, my IP telephone will be useless when the little twerp next door is illegally downloading movies with peer-to-peer software.

Content over communication, indeed.

And, no, fatter pipes are not the panacea the neuts want to believe. Japan and Korea demonstrate that fiber to the home (100 mbps!) just moves the bottlenecks further upstream toward the core of the network.

I want hard science, not religious mush, to rule my internet.