U.S. FCC Hatches New Broadband/Internet Rules

[Margaret B]

In the wake of the recent Supreme Court ruling that the way the FCC was attempting to apply some sort of network neutrality rules to Comcast (US largest cable internet provider), yesterday new rules were issued.

The whole debate, for those who either haven't paid attention, or who don't live in the U.S., revolves around a republican-era decision to classify internet access as 'message services' (under what's known as 'Title 1') rather than general telecommunications services, like telephone/voice traffic ('Title 2').

The newest wrinkle is what might be considered 'Title 2 Lite' in that most of the Title 2 regulations are applied to ISP's but with a few parts 'left out' to supposedly give a bit of free reign to providers.

The basic issue (i.e. 'net neutrality') comes down to this: Can a provider delay, inhibit, choke, or otherwise interfere with internet traffic from/to their 'customers'. Like for instance (comparing to voice/telephone traffic), charging extra to connect your calls to a person on a different provider, or perhaps not allowing that call to go through at all (which is what Comcast was doing).

A good overview and a place to start for those wishing to delve further into this:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/195840/fcc_changes_terms_in_net_neutrality_debate.html

Lots of folks think all of this is WAY to esoteric, but unless lots of folks get current with the debate, the internet (from a U.S. perspective) could have easily turned into a cable-tv clone where sites/traffic types would be chopped up into costly 'service tiers', IF actual service was available/usable.

 

[jess jealousy♥]

We already have something similar here in the UK, Its called bandwidth shaping, and its a piss take, If you d/l at full speed between 10am and 9 pm you get punished for 5 hrs, the sad thing is they don't shape the bill you still have to pay for the full speed they are supposed to give you.
The 5 hr punishment is 1/5th the speed you normally have - Welcome to Virgin broadband.

 

[cincibohemian94]

Yep, under the old classification here, Comcast was doing worse, the FCC fined them, then the courts threw that out because of the 'classification'.

Things are now 'almost' back to normal, as in the rules BEFORE Bush (i.e., 1976 through 2003), except for a few things. No more 'traffic shaping', traffic blocking, etc.

We'll have to wait and see what loopholes the lawyers can 'invent', though, after a bit, before we see how it works out.

To add to the 'fun', two large telecoms are switching hands, Verizon (old Bell Atlantic) in my area is selling off 'rural' parts to Frontier (a really rural telco, even though where I live 2 mi. away is the worlds largest building, next to the largest U.S. industrial airport!), the 'inventor' of 5GB DSL caps. And south of me Qwest is selling off what they bought 10 years ago (U.S. West, another old 'Baby Bell') to Century Tel, another 'rural' telco. I guess anything smaller than NYC is considered 'rural' to the corporations, where they can't make 10% ROI per year..!

Then of course add to that, Comcast is trying to by the NBC tv/radio network.

 

[juicyfruit]

Just be grateful you lot can get unlimited plans with >1mb/s at an affordable price.

 

[Ceila M]

Just be grateful you lot can get unlimited plans with >1mb/s at an affordable price.

Define 'unlimited', and 'affordable'.

As soon as Frontier takes over the DSL line I'm currently on ($37/month), my unlimited (3M/768k) becomes a 5GB/month capped service. The only other alternative is Comcast, which is capped at 250GB/Month, although if one uses about half that you'll run into an 'unpublished' cap (~$50/month), where P2P and usenet traffic is, by Comcasts AUP definition, 'bandwidth hogging'.

The only other alternative is either commercial T1 (1.5M/1.5M) service ($225-250/month) or 'business class' Comcast, where one comes under the 'bandwidth hogging' AUP, although no 'cap'. for $100-200/month. I've got the paperwork for that in front of me, and will have to use a VPN service to hide my traffic from Comcasts deep-packet inspection operation.

The FIOS plants here, which are some 3 miles away from me in every direction (!), will continue to be run by Verizon for the next year, until full turn-over to Frontier. Unknown at this point what will happen there, rates are GREAT now, but it appears Frontier is going to shut down the DSL (or with those 5GB caps no customer will pay for it) for those not on FIOS, so GOD knows what will happen a year from now.

Just not looking good.

 

[Geek]

Well if I convert AUD to USD I pay:

$44.41US for 50GB incl Upload - 1500/256. I used to pay the same but for 10GB not including uploads.

If you use a mainstream ISP like Telstra you'll probably pay some outragous fee per GB after you've run out of quota. Also it's common for Telstra to offer 64k upload.

Hows that for a comparison?

Check Whirlpool's BC plan search to find out how much we really are in the shit.

In my opinion, Telstra should never have been sold. They've fucked over Australia big time.

Unless you work for the Government or live in the a Metropolitan area you can't get decent speeds. Tasmania is one of the few states which have fibre. What's the point? You just run out of quota faster.

 

[Mhyco O]

Hows that for a comparison?

Yuck. The last few years I worked for a living, I did trans-oceanic fiber systems engineering/design/installation/operation. Virtually all of those systems (especially those going to the 'far east' and Australia were designed to handle tons of 64kb/s voice circuits.

Those are for all practical purposes defunct at this juncture, due to VOIP. So the bandwidth available for data traffic (i.e. 'internet') is huge, as if it wasn't huge before. We're talking multi-Terabits. But even like the 'advanced' countries like the U.S., the gap in the system is the 'last mile', and just like Australia, the U.S. has LOTS of 'rural' last mile, were the population density is more cows/sheep/rabbits per sq. mile than people.

There are technologies, if used in a rational mix. that can do the job though. Terrestrial microwave (4G here) is one way, as is satellite for the extreme boonies, there are synthetic Ka-band spot beam systems that should be coming on line here in the next year or so, they were supposed to be a couple years back but the systems got waylaid/re-purposed to do HD dbs video (more money to be made).

Every time that some exotic system(s) are rolled out though, some clever engineering types figures a way to squeeze some life out of copper. The costing is the barrier. AT&T here is using super-ADSL for video, copper runs from fiber hubs in the 200Mb/s class. But fiber is the ultimate solution, it's biggest cost is the physical splicing, and that (both in the skill and time required) has continued to drop like a rock, even over the past couple of years due to FIOS.

It will all get there, a lot depends on how much gouging is going on, how many 'providers' greed stipulates a ROI of 1000% or more, PER YEAR. And of course they want the government (federal or local) to guarantee that return.

 

[Culture Vulture]

comcast has been able to shape internet traffic and always had even after being sued for shaping bittorrent traffic were they still able to shape traffic they just make it less noticable they twell you all about it on there sites

 

[Libbles1233]

comcast has been able to shape internet traffic and always had even after being sued for shaping bittorrent traffic were they still able to shape traffic they just make it less noticable they twell you all about it on there sites

With the changes in the classification this week by the FCC, they'll be rung up again (heavy fines), and maybe they'll try a run at the courts again. 'Traffic Shaping' is now expressly illegal.

 

[Coastie Girl]

All these isp companies will find loopholes to continue their current business models. Charge high fees for *unlimited* access and the cap and shape the users traffic to something manageable. Most companies will mostly BS that it's the user is using his Connection to run a DDOS attack and fudge the logs. That way they legal can cap and limit you

 

[mr.awesome]

With the changes in the classification this week by the FCC, they'll be rung up again (heavy fines), and maybe they'll try a run at the courts again. 'Traffic Shaping' is now expressly illegal.

Comcast's current traffic shaping scheme would probably be legal since its agnostic on the protocols. If they were to specifically only shape a certain type of traffic, then they would get in trouble. But the current system only throttles you if you have too much usage in general and are doing it during high traffic periods.