Open Internet In the Balance: Verizon-FCC before pro-business DC District Appeals

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Verizon-F.C.C. Court Fight Takes On Regulating Nethttp://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/09/09/business/verizon-and-fcc-net-neutrality-battle-set-in-district-court.html?from=homepage

If you think you're getting screwed by comparatively shitty, wildly expensive Internet service now, just wait until network corps decide what you can access and at what speeds, if at all.

I expect FCC to win either in this anti-Human-American court, or in the anti-Human-American SCOTUS.

If Verizon wins and Congress tries to pass a law to override Versizon,etc, the Repugs will block it to protect the corps screwing citizens.

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The Incredible Shrinking Internet (http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/09/the-incredible-shrinking-internet.html)

Yves here. The state of pricing and service levels for the Internet in the US is a disgrace that doesn’t get the attention it deserves. Other countries (South Korea is a prime example) made getting cheap, pervasive Internet connectivity a national priority because they saw it as a spur to innovation. And in the UK, our Richard Smith an ancient house in a little village has 55 Mbps download speeds. What gives? But not to worry. The pipeline providers are scheming as to how to wring even more out of customers.

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The big providers don’t want to do that, though, so instead they are trying to figure out ways to charge customers more for what they already pay for. And the amounts they are charging are exorbitant. For instance, Verizon Wireless’ HomeFusion service has a top tier (http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2013/09/22/home-internet-service-dsl-cable-or-wireless/2840097/) of $120 a month for 30 GB, with a $10 charge for every gigabyte over that. Since, as the article notes, Netflix can take up to 700 MB for an hour of streaming, that cap will get blown through pretty quickly. And it’s completely inadequate for the next generation of video: you can forget about streaming a movie that takes (http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Sonys-New-4K-Film-Service-Will-Obliterate-Your-Bandwidth-Cap-125653) 45 to 60 GB.

That’s not all of the bad news, either. Internet connections have traditionally worked like this: Select your package, pay for it, use it for what you want. That’s what you do with your ISP. That’s what Google does too. Everyone pays to get on. But now there’s an emerging talking point (http://www.wildcat.arizona.edu/article/2013/09/fcc-must-be-given-rights-to-regulate-the-internet) that web sites (for some reason called “edge providers” in a bit of unhelpfully obscure tech lingo) are somehow not paying to get on. Verizon is before the FCC (http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/09/verizons-bid-to-kill-network-neutrality-law-goes-to-court-monday/) right now arguing that prices are higher because edge providers – which, remember, already pay to get on the Internet – do not also pay to get off. In other words, when you use your Verizon connection to watch a YouTube video, YouTube is also somehow bundled in as a Verizon customer.

The reason they are doing this is because they want to do away with net neutrality. If lots of their customers are getting data from site A then site A is a problem. If only they didn’t have to connect their customers to it, or maybe if they could charge the site a premium! And that’s where usage based (http://www.deadline.com/2013/09/netflix-prepares-to-respond-as-broadband-providers-push-usage-based-pricing/) broadband pricing comes in. If Verizon succeeds against the FCC and net neutrality is gutted, web site owners face the prospect of being charged extra by providers for the privilege of delivering content to customers.

We are already seeing a version of that as providers make deals (http://gigaom.com/2013/08/27/time-warner-cables-new-xbox-app-wont-count-against-data-caps/) to serve certain content free of data cap usage. And when you’re on a plan that has a 30 GB per month cap with $1 for every GB over, that’s a pretty big deal. It begins to make sense to confine yourself to those sites that your ISP doesn’t count against your cap just to make sure you don’t accidentally blow through it. Of course, some take a more sanguine (http://www.forbes.com/sites/bretswanson/2013/06/04/verizon-espn-and-the-future-of-broadband/) view:

The critics’ real worry, then, is that ESPN, by virtue of its size, could gain an advantage on some other sports content provider who chose not to offer a similar uncapped service. But is this government’s role – the micromanagement of prices, products, the structure of markets, and relationships among competitive and cooperative firms?


Http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/09/the-incredible-shrinking-internet.html#sMSQLcMqyAYeG55x.99 (http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/09/the-incredible-shrinking-internet.html#sMSQLcMqyAYeG55x.99)