Comment 44EZ Re: Good/bad?

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The FCC has approved Net Neutrality rules and declared Broadband a Utility

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Good/bad? (Score: 1)

by kwerle@pipedot.org on 2015-02-27 22:37 (#3ZAD)

Anyone think this is a bad thing? I'd love to hear reasoned arguments.

Re: Good/bad? (Score: 2, Interesting)

by kerrany@pipedot.org on 2015-03-02 16:14 (#44EZ)

I don't personally think it's bad, but I can give you their side. All the "bad" I've heard has boiled down to the following points:
  • This amounts to allowing the FCC (not Congress) to declare a tax. (As phone providers are required to tax/fee their customers to death in order to pay for "last mile" coverage, so people fear broadband providers will be forced to do the same.) The people issuing this objection are staunch anti-tax conservatives and libertarians.
    • Such a tax on Americans with broadband could be anywhere between $48 and $150+ - per year. (Gasp!)
    • Americans won't want to pay the extra $4-$12.50 per month and the broadband companies will lose all their customers. (Hysteria!)
    • Because all the customers will leave, the broadband companies will stop being "able to innovate".
  • Even if that doesn't take out the broadband companies, all the expense of abiding by the new "restrictions" - no data caps, no traffic shaping (not true), Netflix using up all the bandwidth - will bring them down in a tangle of red tape and overloaded, smoking fiber.
  • The broadband companies will have "no incentive" to keep laying fiber.
  • One of the FCC guys on the board alleges that Obama pressured Wheeler into doing this rather than letting him use his good judgement.
So there's the list. The other side has better points, in my opinion. Net Neutrality is going to do more good than it does bad in my opinion. Fingers crossed for the future.

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Time Reason Points Voter
2015-03-03 00:26 Interesting +1 reziac@pipedot.org

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