A fashion is nothing but an induced epidemic - GBS
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US broadband plan falls into chaos
AMERICA COULD SINK into a broadband dark age after a US court decided that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has no right to stop carriers from developing a two tier Internet.
The court case was bought by Comcast, which objected to the FCC telling it that it could not throttle bittorrent traffic.
Much of the US broadband plan is dependant on having a free and open Internet where everyone is treated equally.
The court ruling has stunned broadband campaigners who see it as placing the FCC's broadband plan under threat. Derek Turner of the Free Press, a nonpartisan organisation that campaigns for universal access to communications, said the consequences of this decision are far reaching and it has forced the FCC into an existential crisis.
If the FCC cannot protect consumers from Internet service providers (ISPs) then it will be unable to implement the national broadband plan, which is clearly on life support as a result of the court's ruling. The aim is to provide every American in the country with high speed Internet access by 2020.
According to the BBC, the FCC argued it had authority to police ISPs and stop them from blocking or slowing down Internet traffic. However the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia sided with Comcast and ruled that Congress had not given the FCC the power to regulate the ISP's network management practices.
There is now nothing to stop the ISPs from establishing a two tier Internet. In effect, cable and telephone companies are legally allowed to charge customers extra for better quality of service or faster connections.
Basically this could mean that rich people will have good Internet bandwidth while poor people will have slower service.
There also will be nothing to prevent ISPs from making deals with content providers like the Hollywood studios and big media companies to turn the US Internet into something like cable TV.
It is possible that the FCC could go to Congress to grant the agency explicit jurisdiction over ISPs' network practices.
Comcast has said the company has no intentions of imposing new restrictions and "remains committed" to the FCC's broad goal of an open Internet. Although if that's the case then its reason for challenging the FCC ruling in court is anyone's guess. µ
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Average broadband speeds in megabits per second:
USA = 4.8 listed, found to be 1.9 upon actual testing.
Germany = 6.4
Poland = 7.5
Canada = 7.6
France = 17.6
Sweden = 18.2
Netherlands = 21.7
Korea = 45.6
Japan = 61.0
Iceland has 83% of the population on broadband. The USA has 59%, and the average consumer price for broadband in the USA is more than double the consumer cost for broadband in the rest of the world, yet for much slower speeds. Example: In London $9 per month buys 8 meg dsl. in NYC $20 buys 1 meg dsl.
While many of the countries in the list are indeed officially on the metric system (as are all countries on the planet with the exception of only the USA, Burma and Liberia) only the Japanese drivers would be found on the left side of the road.
Sources: Communication Workers of America, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation's "Assessing Broadband in America" report, and New York Times.
Wow, way to jump to that conclusion that net neutrality = better broadband. I always believed that it was because the UK drives on the left side of the road and uses the metric system.
OR, it could be because the UK has an area several magnitudes smaller than the US and a population density 8 times that of the US, making it cheaper to install infrastructure that reaches a larger number of users.
I see it as ISP's wanting to block speed access to certain servers or address to squash competition for one thing.
Most ISP's also offer phone and cable TV access along with internet. So they would have an interest in slowing your speed down to certain places like the Magic Jack Phone servers for example. That way your calls cannot stay connected for $20.00 per year and would force you to buy your ISP's phone service instead for $20.00 per month.
I have a friend with a fast broadband connect and funny how he has great ISP connection speed until he uses his Magic Jack phone and it keeps dropping calls.
Also I have cable internet broadband, yet I cannot get enough speed to watch HULU movies. Is this because my ISP also sells cable TV movie channels and wants me to pay more to watch movies through them ?
As the situation in the EU has shown net neutrality is not only unnecessary but perhaps detrimental to broadband as far as the end user customer is concerned. The UK voted against net neutrality and it has some of the best broadband around, with an average customer broadband speed far in excess of the average in the USA, with a far larger percentage of the population able to access broadband in an unrestricted manner. As the British government put it, net neutrality is "an answer to problems we don't have, using a philosophy we don't share."
We now have a new political issue that we badly need to bang a drum about.
Does anyone know when the elections are? I've been ignoring the commercials, but I intend to pay close attention now.
I know 1-issue voters are scary to some people, but hopefully people will have more than one choice even if net neutrality favoredness(couldn't come up with a better word) is a necessity for a vote.
Please flame this author by using the "flame author" link within the article - thanks. This guy deserves it.
Ed B. says "Cable and telephone companies are legally allowed to charge customers extra for better quality of service or faster connections."
REALLY ED? My ISP offers from 1Mbps to 20Mbps connections like most other ISPs in the World. Speed or QOS is not the issue here. It is whether you are allowed to connect to certain hosts or not.
You deserve to be flamed. I am flaming you now.
The court merely ruled that the FCC did not have the authority to enforce these guidelines. They are guidelines, not laws. If they are to be enforced they need to be made law. The court was correct in its ruling and now the elected officials need to follow up with a law if they feel that it's the right thing to do.
if we assume that the court was right (even remotely) that FCC has no right to regulate data, let's see how Comcast can transmit that data without licenses for the various radio frequencies they use.
FCC can regulate radio frequencies and the court cannot make any ruling on this, as FCC since its creation in 1934 was created to regulate interstate and international communications by radio, television, wire, satellite and cable.
Want to broadcast something by any means that FCC can regulate? you need a license for those frequencies!
all FCC has to do is revoke (or not renew) all Comcast's frequency licenses and re-lease them to whoever implements a reasonable data neutrality policy.
Problem solved and Comcast is out of the picture (and business :p).
correctly, mistyped as correctly;y. normally easily remedied save for there being no 'edit' function here.
"There are no 'nopartisan'(sic) organizations in the USA. This handle is mostly used by left wing groups trying to sound reasonable."
That statement is not only incorrect it is ludicrous and misspelled even though you had the correct spelling in front of you.
Definition of Nonpartisan:
"In political science, nonpartisan denotes an election, event or organization in which the participants do not declare or do not formally have a political party affiliation.
Not partisan; free from party affiliation, bias, or designation.
Some nonpartisan organizations are truly such; others are nominally nonpartisan but in fact are generally identifiable with a political party."
By the way, that was a very poor attempt at trolling. Most trolls have at least some small intelligence. You, I believe, just wanted to see your typing published on a web page.
As The Free Press publication has no connection to or bias for/against any political party it is correctly;y identified as "nonpartisan", unlike other mass media companies such as Fox.
"...a nonpartisan organisation ..."
There are no 'nopartisan' organizations in the USA. This handle is mostly used by left wing groups trying to sound reasonable.
This ruling would place the responsibility on broadband for all lost revenues to pvp technologies. This would include encrypted pvp methods that broadband currently has no ability to throttle. So.... I guess this means the RIAA would need to attack Comcast with their evil mafia style lawsuits.
Chris and b - Twism's analogy is correctly applied to THIS article. This article does a lousy job of (not) explaining the details of bandwidth throttling of torrent sites, in fact you dind't bring it up either, but twism has responded appropriately to THE ARTICLE.
Why don't you say something to the author, why say twism is wrong? You guys seem to be talking about totally different 'news' articles than this one.
"if that's the case then its reason for challenging the FCC ruling in court is anyone's guess."
As was common knowledge in the news, the reason Comcast filed suit against the FCC was the possible $1.77 trillion dollar fine the FCC could levy against Comcast for bittorrent throttling under the previous decision. With that much money at stake anyone would have fought it.
@twism your analogy is not correct.
We are not talking about the overall speed that an ISP delivers to you as an end user. You are correct when you say in this regard you get what you pay for.
However net neutrality states that an ISP cannot give priority to some services over others, i.e the providers of the content, not the paying consumer.
An example would be giving faster speeds to particular web sites (who are friends of the isp) while giving slower speeds or blocking competitors completely. That is what they are talking about.
In the US, what comcast did was to give slower speeds to the bittorrent network protocol!
It should not be the ISPs job to filter content, you pay them to access the internet they should not be allowed to hold sections of it to ransom.
In a completely free market competition should ensure that such problems do not emerge, the problem is with ISPs in the US (and even more so in the UK) is that most of the network is controlled by only a few companies. That is why we need safeguards to stop them from setting up an internet cartel of sorts...
well thats whats supposed to happen you pay more and get bigger bandwidth! but in alas in the uk that does not happen.
BT for example like offering all sorts mind boggling speeds then say sorry sir your line will only support up to 4megs pay up
after joining virgin and signing up for the 20 meg service ..then watching my bandwidth choke down to 1meg in the evenings 5pm to 12pm ..virgin response "nothing we can do about it there must be alot of people illegally downloading in your area" but pay up tho!
point being i bet the yanks will do it better.
"Basically this could mean that rich people will have good Internet bandwidth while poor people will have slower service."
As in rich people can drive faster cars, afford better holidays, go to fancier restaurants, live in nicer houses...
Welcome to the capitalist west...
YOU EXPLAIN NOTHING!
http://www.pentasmal.com/d/20000102.html
Isn't this the way broadband access works in the UK?? If your monthly bill is £10 you're likely to be connected at a speed of around 2megs. If you're paying £20+ every month, you're more than likely to have a connection speed of 20 - 50 megs.
That's how it works.... You get what you pay for.
So, if there's a yankee family paying $10, they'll have a slower connection than a yankee family paying $25+
That's the society we live in regardless of where you are from! ;-)
I hope this explains everything! lol