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eureka40 wrote:Speaking on WMAL this morning former US Atty and high powered DC lawyer Joe DiGenova said the FCC Net Neutrality rules will never come to be since they will never survive a court challenge. He added that "standing will never be an issue."

I don't believe that. I mean I believe it at face value - how can you force a policy into what is essentially private property? But then I think back to when the government forced carriers to open up phone lines to several long distance service providers, regardless of who owned the lines.. It certainly could happen.

jmra wrote:Neighbor is a manager of some type with AT&T. He has been very vocal about the negative repercussions this would have on end users. I hope his "better get used to dial up speeds" is just a rant.

I think we should perhaps not rely on AT&Ts nature in regard to doing what is best for it's customers.... Seems like half of the FCC regulations we have are due to some really anti-consumer behavior that they engaged in at one time or another.

treadlightly wrote:I don't understand how a private entity can be told what to allow over its network. On the one hand we have folks wanting terrorists kept from communicating, and on the other we must have net neutrality.

In an earlier life I built an ISP in my back bedroom, eventually serving high speed access, pre-DSL, with wireless delivery. It nearly drove me under to support the cost and upkeep of the wireless network, but I couldn't stand to pass up a way to provide something faster than dial-up.

A local business discovered internet radio, and would stream to eight or ten computers. In present times, that doesn't seem like so much, but each computer was getting a separate copy of the stream. They were using a megabit per second or so on a one megabit wireless link.

Please tell me they didn't just make traffic shaping and bandwidth allocation unlawful.

I work in the business and have mixed feelings about this too. I want smaller government and free market, but too much of that can be a bad thing - think about the banking implosion.
The internet works only if a bunch of unrelated parties "play nice" with each other. As soon as we allow these companies to hold each other hostage or play favorites, it becomes massively complicated. And I have absolutely no doubt that some company will start to take advantage.

Simple legislation that states that any network decision has to be made "pro consumer" might work... That is, the legislation is vague, but actionable, and not entirely overbearing.

In regard to the FCC overreach, maybe... But look, without it, we'd still have phone monopolies and you and I would be paying 0.50 for "long distance" to the next county... Anyone remember that? The infrastructure has to be shared, but not burdensome, so it's a tough question.



I'm rural and I pay waay to much for internet compared to what I can get 10 miles away. Every now and then I think about bringing in a T1, setting up a tower, and selling it to the neighbors. The big risk in that is if suddenly rural internet becomes a reality (per Obama) - I lose my shirt on all of it... And I'm always looking for a faster internet option.