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Ajit Pai Thanks Congress For Helping Him Kill Net Neutrality Rules (arstechnica.com) 215

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai today thanked Congress for preventing the U.S. government from enforcing net neutrality rules. "The Pai-led Federal Communications Commission repealed Obama-era net neutrality rules, but the repeal could have been reversed by Congress if it acted before the end of its session," reports Ars Technica. "Democrats won a vote to reverse the repeal in the Senate but weren't able to get enough votes in the House of Representatives before time ran out." From the report: "I'm pleased that a strong bipartisan majority of the U.S. House of Representatives declined to reinstate heavy-handed Internet regulation," Pai said in a statement marking the deadline passage today. Pai claimed that broadband speed improvements and new fiber deployments in 2018 occurred because of his net neutrality repeal -- although speeds and fiber deployment also went in the right direction while net neutrality rules were in place. "Over the past year, the Internet has remained free and open," Pai said, adding that "the FCC's light-touch approach is working." Pai didn't mention a recent case in which CenturyLink temporarily blocked its customers' Internet access in order to show an ad or a recent research report accusing Sprint of throttling Skype (which Sprint denies).
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Ajit Pai Thanks Congress For Helping Him Kill Net Neutrality Rules

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  • Thanks (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 110010001000 ( 697113 ) on Wednesday January 02, 2019 @07:52PM (#57895622) Homepage Journal
    A little extra in your pay packet this week!
  • free and open (Score:5, Insightful)

    by zlives ( 2009072 ) on Wednesday January 02, 2019 @07:54PM (#57895628)

    fuck you pai, and the congress you rode in on

    • Yeah, fucking congress... Damn people just appeared out of thin air and took over, while everybody sat and watched, and cheered!

  • they can't try again when the Democrats take over the house?

  • by HannethCom ( 585323 ) on Wednesday January 02, 2019 @08:00PM (#57895668)
    The only thing I want to hear about that piece of crap is when he has been tossed in jail. I don't think it will happen, but Ajit Pai lied under oath in court and that is a criminal offense.
  • GOP (Score:5, Informative)

    by meglon ( 1001833 ) on Wednesday January 02, 2019 @08:07PM (#57895700)
    Fucking over US citizens every chance they get.
    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Solandri ( 704621 )
      Net neutrality is only "necessary" because of the cable monopolies. If the customers don't have a viable alternative ISP they can flee to, the cable monopoly can get away with anti-consumer moves like degrading Netflix until Netflix pays their extortion fee.

      The reason we have cable monopolies is because local governments awarded monopoly service contracts. Usually they granted the monopoly in exchange for coverage guarantees - to insure that low-income areas weren't excluded from cable and Internet ser
      • Re:GOP (Score:5, Insightful)

        by JaredOfEuropa ( 526365 ) on Thursday January 03, 2019 @02:40AM (#57896992) Journal
        Not really. The real problem is that most ISPs are not satisfied anymore to just pipe the internet into our home like any plumber, they also want to get into the content game. And as soon as that happens, there’s an incentive to promote your own crap over similar content from other providers. And in any case there’s the temptation of letting someone pay you to give them preferred service, allowing you to collect from both consumers and hosts. We (still) have plenty of providers to choose from here, but they were getting ready to do all that, before our parliament voted in net neutrality. One of them tries and sees what they can get away with, then the rest of them follows suit. A race to the bottom.
      • by Anonymous Coward

        Network service, just like electricity, water or gas distribution, has very high installation costs and marginal maintenance costs. This means that it tends to consolidate into natural monopolies, where the winner takes all even in absence of the regulation that you decry.

        If you want a competitive market, you need to have regulation. This works quite well in Europe, where cities do not have any competence in market regulation. It it done at the highest level, on a "federal" scale, which is harder to corrupt

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by dgatwood ( 11270 )

        The reason we have cable monopolies is because local governments awarded monopoly service contracts. Usually they granted the monopoly in exchange for coverage guarantees - to insure that low-income areas weren't excluded from cable and Internet service.

        They did the same thing for telephone. But you're badly mistaken if you believe that removing monopolies will result in competition. Countless towns have tried that over the years, and essentially 100% of the time, they were back to a monopoly within about

      • The reason we have cable monopolies is because local governments awarded monopoly service contracts.

        That's part of the reason but only a part. A bigger reason is simply that it is economically inefficient for networks to be small - literally network effects. Last mile ISPs are a classic example of a natural monopoly [wikipedia.org].

        You identified part of the problem which is the last mile monopoly/oligopoly. This could be ameliorated by prohibiting companies that deal in content from also owning the lines (or towers) to deliver that content. Then there is minimal conflict of interest and no real reason to charge Netf

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Its really hard to read the top article due to the ad that takes 30% of the screen and blocks the ad.

    Scroll you say... well the article scrolls under the ad

  • by melted ( 227442 ) on Wednesday January 02, 2019 @08:16PM (#57895740) Homepage

    Congress should make net neutrality law of the land. It's insane that the FCC (an unelected body) had the authority for something like that to begin with.

    • Yes, congress should make a law. And then to enforce the law they'll need to appoint some people with oversight powers. And then to keep the law up-to-date with current technology they'll need to set some guidelines, and then choose some people who will apply those guidelines as congress intends for them to be applied.

      To ensure that these appointed people aren't rogues who will go off-script, there will need to be some sort of nomination and confirmation process... Where Ajit Pai will tell congress that
    • It's insane that the FCC (an unelected body) had the authority for something like that to begin with.

      You're making Pai's point. Congress should be the one who determines the extent to which ISPs should be regulated - not the FCC. Arguably, Congress already weighed in on this with the 1996 Telecommunications Act when it left broadband ISPs out of the category of "common carrier" (i.e. Title II) and subject to neutrality regulation. It was only in 2008 that the FCC, acting on its own, muscled in and told Comcast to stop throttling traffic. Comcast sued the FCC and won under the premise that the FCC did not h

  • by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Wednesday January 02, 2019 @08:17PM (#57895746)
    thank the GOP. There have been a few votes to save Net Neutrality and they were lost along party lines (a few GOPers did break ranks but it wasn't enough).

    I know folks don't like partisanship, but there are partisan issues and NN is one of them. Had Trump lost the election we wouldn't be reading this story today. Had the Democrats taken the Senate & House by a wide enough majority to override vetos we would be reading about the upcoming vote to restore NN. These aren't debatable points, they're just facts. Cold, hard facts.

    We've got another election in about 2 years. Show up at your primary. The Dems have a wing [justicedemocrats.com] that refuses corporate PAC money. If Net Neutrality matters to you then you know what to do.
    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      What's the downside of no Net Neutrality? Was the Internet a wasteland prior to 2015? Is the fact that Internet speeds are up 40% over the last year [recode.net] a bad thing? What did the brief, regulation-by-executive-directive Net Neutrality time bring?
      • by Anonymous Coward

        Most gas stations probably aren't going to short you at the pump, but isn't it nice knowing that there are rules in place to prevent them from doing so/punish them if they do?

        • Yep! And with Internet speeds increasing by 40% per year, what's the downside? I get more than I pay for, but then - I don't use the crap my ISP provided as a router and WIFI modem. I used to get 25-40 Mbps down with the original Spectrum stuff, but when I quickly replaced it with a Netgear router and Orbi WIFI system, I'm getting solid 110-120 Mbps down - from the 100 Mbps connectivity I pay for. So if someone has an issue, is it the crap router they got "for free", or the service itself?
          • I get 5mbps, and no ISP actually services my area since at least 2016, so 5mbps is grandfathered legacy DSL.

            As a result, you could say I've actually seen a decrease in internet speeds, not an increase. 5mbps to 0.

            I don't get celullar service worth squat to use a hotspot. Cable, DSL, and Fiber are not available in my area, and satellite has ridiculous caps on data, such as 10GB per month.

            Guess I'm on the wrong side of the cow pasture... "Big City" is just down the road on the other side of that cow pas
    • "thank the GOP. There have been a few votes to save Net Neutrality and they were lost along party lines (a few GOPers did break ranks but it wasn't enough).

      I know folks don't like partisanship, but there are partisan issues and NN is one of them. Had Trump lost the election we wouldn't be reading this story today. Had the Democrats taken the Senate & House by a wide enough majority to override vetos we would be reading about the upcoming vote to restore NN. These aren't debatable points, they're just fa

      • not because they're somehow special, but because they've been given almost nothing. Between student loan debt and the 20% lower pay than boomers they own nothing to speak of.

        The right wing stay in power by exploiting people's natural conservative natures (e.g. the genuine fear of change). This works because people have something to lose and that lack a sense of entitlement. The Millennials have nothing to lose and they're at least a bit entitled (the media likes to portray them as entitled brats, this i
    • That Justice Democrats wing sure looks like the far left to me. What's their stance on microaggressions?
    • I know folks don't like partisanship,

      {checks site logo to make sure I'm on /., spews coffee}

    • Ultimately Congress has abdicated it's law making role because, heaven forbid, a lawmaker take a position and risk losing his or her seat. As such, increasingly we have seen legislation by executive action whether directly or indirectly through agencies like the FCC. Net Neutrality was a series of rules facilitated by a 3-2 vote of FCC in 2015. It was basically three people changing two decades of policy that had been in existence under both Democrat and Republican administrations and Congresses. Big whoop,
  • job security (Score:5, Interesting)

    by renegade600 ( 204461 ) on Wednesday January 02, 2019 @08:23PM (#57895784)

    he was really thanking congress for helping him secure an extremely high paying job for when he leaves government service.

  • Future headline I'd love to see!

  • Every time I see these 'net neutrality' things all I can think about is Idiocracy and the 'its got electrolytes' bit, and the NN version of the same is 'muh bandwidth wuz stranglified'.

    Competition in a zero sum environment:

    The total bandwidth available is not short time frame elastic, its completely static. So an example for sake of argument under the imposed 'bad' NN rules the 'muh bandwidth wuz stranglified' people keep pushing for:
    Netflix in North America uses 50%(whatever the real number is doesn't mat

    • by dgatwood ( 11270 )

      Every time I see these 'net neutrality' things all I can think about is Idiocracy and the 'its got electrolytes' bit, and the NN version of the same is 'muh bandwidth wuz stranglified'.

      Competition in a zero sum environment:

      The total bandwidth available is not short time frame elastic, its completely static. So an example for sake of argument under the imposed 'bad' NN rules the 'muh bandwidth wuz stranglified' people keep pushing for: Netflix in North America uses 50%(whatever the real number is doesn't matter) of available bandwidth and pays the same as everyone else under that rule, ISP/trunking/peering companies are unable to charge them more by the imposed rules. Along comes SUPERNetflix with double goodness and 4X the bandwidth use which everyone starts using because double is mo gooderer, and now they use say 99% of the available bandwidth and the same ISP/trunking/peering companies (yes these numbers are exaggerated) are unable to charge more or negotiate a throttling plan due to the imposed rules.

      The net result is all internet traffic is essentially throttled down to a max of 1% and the ISP is handcuffed, unable to charge for fair use, or throttle in the best interest of its customers.

      Actually, you're wrong on pretty much every count here. For any sufficiently large ISP, Netflix will *give* the ISP a caching box for their data center that will take the vast majority of Netflix traffic entirely off of the upstream pipes. The only cost to them, other than the electricity to power the box and the cost of square footage to house it, is the cost of upgrading the infrastructure from the central office to the customer, which is usually a matter of upgrading the equipment at both ends. And gi

      • The only cost to them, other than the electricity to power the box and the cost of square footage to house it, is the cost of upgrading the infrastructure from the central office to the customer, which is usually a matter of upgrading the equipment at both ends.

        An ISP should pay Netflix's rack-space and electricity bill because ???
        Netflix should decide when and where an ISP upgrade its infrastructure because ???

        Meanwhile, your solution seems to be the government force ISP's to eat those costs because Netflix and Comcast are fighting.

        Netflix throttled it's customers and blamed ISPs and from your comment it's apparent why. They want free rack-space, free electricity and the ability to decide an ISP upgrade rollout forced by the government.

        • The ISP doesnâ(TM)t connect directly to Netflix and has no financial arrangement with Netflix. The ISP pays their backbone provider for the unbalanced data coming into the ISPâ(TM)s network. Netflix offered free caching servers so the ISPs could reduce their bandwidth on the backbone and peering agreements, directly reducing their costs. Why wouldnâ(TM)t they take it? Oh, right, because online video services are a threat to the legacy cable TV goose that is reaching menopause and no longer la

          • Netflix offered free caching servers

            Which require rack-space and electricity. Do those costs offset the bandwidth savings? If an ISP gives such favorable treatment to Netflix do they have to give the same treatment to any streaming service/information service provider? Is the ISP liable for colluding with Netflix against a Netflix competitor if they don't offer the same "free" services?

            • This has nothing to do with bandwidth, and everything to do with the total amount of traffic on a network (bandwidth is simultaneous capacity, not total volume over a period, which is how all the peering agreements are structured).

              Yes, the lopsided peering agreements cost the ISPs far far more than the electricity costs for a couple of rack mounted boxes. Consumer ISPs generally have much more download traffic than upload traffic, and so they end up paying the backbone providers rather than the other way ar

              • Yes, the lopsided peering agreements cost the ISPs far far more than the electricity costs for a couple of rack mounted boxes.

                Would those agreements still be made if streaming services, like Netflix, didn't exist? If so then it is a moot point. But that is hardly the entire issue. How many other streaming/information services does the ISP have to house? Why is Netflix able to dictate the business of a different company? A couple here a couple there add up quickly. Besides, just because it is cost effective doesn't mean that an ISP has to do whatever Netflix demands.

                How is it "favorable treatment" on the ISP's side to reduce the ISP's costs? The ISP didn't initiate it, and the ISP isn't the one making the offer, Netflix is.

                Doesn't matter who made the offer. Netflix is colluding with an IS

                • by dgatwood ( 11270 )

                  Yes, the lopsided peering agreements cost the ISPs far far more than the electricity costs for a couple of rack mounted boxes.

                  Would those agreements still be made if streaming services, like Netflix, didn't exist? If so then it is a moot point.

                  The agreements would exist, but the total traffic (and thus, the total cost of those agreements) would be much, much less.

                  But that is hardly the entire issue. How many other streaming/information services does the ISP have to house? Why is Netflix able to dictate the

                • by dgatwood ( 11270 )

                  Netflix isn't innocent in this. They throttled their own customers and blamed it on ISPs.

                  Citation needed.

                  As far as I'm aware, the only throttling Netflix has ever done has been in the form of providing lower-bitrate streams to pay-by-the-byte cellular customers, and they have never blamed the ISPs for this money-saving feature.

                • Would those agreements still be made if streaming services, like Netflix, didn't exist? If so then it is a moot point.

                  Yes, that is how traffic is and always has been metered between networks.

                  How many other streaming/information services does the ISP have to house?

                  None. Netflix traffic constitutes much of the ISP's usage, so Netflix offered a way for the ISP to reduce their costs. Netflix received no direct benefit here other than improved customer satisfaction from better latency. ISPs setup similar arrange

            • by dgatwood ( 11270 )

              Netflix offered free caching servers

              Which require rack-space and electricity. Do those costs offset the bandwidth savings?

              For an ISP the size of Comcast and a content provide the size of Netflix, it is cheaper by nearly four orders of magnitude. Netflix actually publishes information about their caching servers online, though I can't find the power specifications, so I can only take a rough guess based on the typical power consumption of blade servers in that form factor.

              I would not expect a 2U rack unit to draw much more than 1 kW of power, which at 8 cents per kWH costs about $700 per year to keep it powered. Each box can

        • by dgatwood ( 11270 )

          An ISP should pay Netflix's rack-space and electricity bill because ???

          A few key points should explain it:

          • The nature of the Internet is that each party must pay for its own bandwidth to the nearest backbone. Netflix pays for the bandwidth it uses to get its data to the backbone by paying its upstream ISP, who pays its upstream ISP, and so on. Similarly, Comcast must do the same.
          • The caching equipment reduces the bandwidth, and thus the cost, of both of those connections. Therefore, it benefits Comcast an
          • Again, it seems that you are saying that Netflix can dictate the business of an ISP to be favorable to Netflix hidden behind the "customers either care enough to demand that the ISP improve its bandwidth or they don't.". As I have asked below:

            How many other streaming services/information service providers does the ISP have to accommodate with free rack-space and electricity? Netflix is colluding with an ISP for better market dominance. If a competitor to Netflix requested the same thing, does the ISP have t

    • by Rhipf ( 525263 )

      So an example for sake of argument under the imposed 'bad' NN rules the 'muh bandwidth wuz stranglified' people keep pushing for:
      Netflix in North America uses 50%(whatever the real number is doesn't matter) of available bandwidth and pays the same as everyone else under that rule, ISP/trunking/peering companies are unable to charge them more by the imposed rules.

      The problem with this statement is that Netflix doesn't pay "the same as everyone else under that rule". They pay a hell of a lot more than I do for Internet access. If Netflix somehow managed to use 99% of the Internet bandwidth that means that 99% of the traffic requests on the Internet are coming from people who wanting Netfix content. Those people are paying their ISP for that requested traffic.
      ISPs asking Netflix to pay so they aren't throttled won't make any difference to those 99% requesting Netflix

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • The rule of community broadband can spread.
    No longer will monopoly telcos get to use federal NN rules to keep out new innovative internet services.
  • by Anonymous Coward

    When a government transitions the selection of valid measurements of the effectiveness of its policies from statistical to anecdotes over to imagined feel-good stories, it becomes a feel-good government for the people to feel good about themselves, but ceases being a government that is capable of acting on the benefit of the people.

  • In northern Europe we enjoy both net neutrality and very high internet speeds. USA is still lagging far behind the modern world :D It is really comically, when you think about it: A large super power, but can't even get its act together at make proper interned speed :D
    • The flaw in your comment is that it treats the entirety of the USA as one entity when it comes to internet speeds.

      I have multiple gigabit fiber providers available to me and pay $70/month for a low latency symmetrical gigabit link to my suburban house at the edge of the city. Other people in some rural areas only have DSL or satellite Internet. Other people in cities are more like me, but there are a few cities where legal restrictions cause some people to be stuck virtually at dial-up.

      Lots of different Sta

  • CC Chairman Ajit Pai today thanked Congress for preventing the U.S. government from enforcing net neutrality rules.

    No he didn't. That's a ludicrous way of putting it.

    Congress didn't "prevent the U.S. government from enforcing net neutrality rules".

    Congress was under no obligation to pass a law implementing some past president's policy preferences.

  • by RonVNX ( 55322 ) on Thursday January 03, 2019 @10:36AM (#57898450)

    Fixed that headline for ya.

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