Mozilla Proposes Their Own Solution For Net Neutrality

does everyone think it will sunshine and rainbows? Everything will be prefect no negative side effects at all? I'm asking. I know there is no such thing as a free lunch so there has to be some sort of downside to reclassifying ISPs.

It will never happen because first you have to get passed Congress and the lobbyists. Second, it will go to court and the FCC will lose.

They were classified like that in the past, and didn't have any special negative effects.

is here: »blog.mozilla.org/netpoli ··· nternet/

Broadband and the Weather has a lot in common. Everybody talks about the weather but cannot do anything about it. Knowledgeable consumers talk about solving the problem related to ISP abuses but but cannot do anything about them, as long as Lawmakers are bought and paid for by ISP's.

The result will be more regulators employed, specific taxes for said regulation (at first to grow out of control), higher cost, and reduced offerings. If they don't open up local competition in kind, the result will be the Bell system all over again. For those old enough to remember, enough said.

Neither the FCC nor the FTC want to flinch, because the first that brings a law for this will get overturned by the ruling elite, and whomever is left will essentially take over regulation of the internet because they will just fill the void and then have impunity to tax.

It seems the FTC is happy playing trust buster in the meantime, and waiting for the FCC to screw up so that it can assert it's power both regulatory and budgetary (who would get all of these new regulatory taxes

If I read the blog it is only concentrating on the ISP to provider, not the ISP to end user. So they are saying no discrimination on the pipe coming in "aka transit fees"/peering but once it is in the dirty hands of Comcast, they can rape and pillage the end user to their liking.

Great compromise. There is nobody left to hate...Even the benign Mozilla are a bunch of a$$holes.

ISP's / CMTS's are controlled by the company who owns it, Like Cox, Charter, TWC & Comcast are Listed as Entertainment Company's not a Telecom. if that changes THEN and only then the government has a say in it. But i bet it will happen some day. its a shame that I cant live without my internet.

Not sure what you mean? ISPs have never been classifed as common carriers (at least not in the U.S.).

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If I read the blog it is only concentrating on the ISP to provider, not the ISP to end user. So they are saying no discrimination on the pipe coming in "aka transit fees"/peering but once it is in the dirty hands of Comcast, they can rape and pillage the end user to their liking.

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I didn't understand that either. Every user can be viewed as a self contained service (since the concept of server and service is way too blurred these days, especially with emergence of P2P and decentralized networks). So such discrimination should be forbidden on that side as well.

No they weren't, At any rate if there are absolutely zero negative effects why are ISPs against it?

So what exactly changed in the 2002 then? How were ISPs classified before that?

I suspect that practical negative effect is simply increased bureaucracy. Since someone will have to audit how ISPs keep these rules. Obviously ISPs consider it an extra burden. It's the question of necessity. If they aren't controlled - anticompetitive behavior is inevitable.

Another effect would be the intended one - preventing rip offs and monopolization. It means less money for ISPs which can have competing businesses (for example video services), so obviously they are against it. But that effect is negative for their greedy appetites, not really negative per se. To put it simply, it will reduce their monopoly and they don't like that.

For example, in electrical networks there was such separation as well (i.e. delivery companies and suppliers). Delivery companies which own the actual wires and at the same time own energy supply sources can't discriminate against alternative suppliers which can use their electric network to reach consumers.

How would this affect connections that netflix has to isp's?

Prior to 2002, cable modem services were not classified at all.

The City of Portland tried to classify AT&T's cable modem service as a common carrier service; AT&T sued them, and the FCC made its decision in 2002 which classified cable modem service as an information service. This was the first time the FCC had even considered the issue, so there was no "change".

The FCC established the classification, it was not a "reclassification".

I see. So it means there were no rules at all (à la Wild West)?

Wheeler is in the Cable and Wireless hall of fame!
»www.fcc.gov/leadership/t ··· -wheeler

It doesnt matter what they are called or how they are listed.

If they are delivering a service that falls under the rules of what the FCC would deem as classified as Title II, then they would be required to abide by said rules.

Same thing for you, who is classified and listed as nothing. If you decide to make a device that uses a radio frequency then you can and will be held accountable to the FCC being that it falls under their authority.

Sortof. The problem was (and still is) that the laws are kinda vague.

Portland tried to exercise its authority under Title VI of the Communications Act, which authorizes cities to regulate cable television service. But AT&T Broadband said cable modem service was not cable TV service.

Some wanted (and still want) to regulate cable modem service as a Title II telecommunications service. But AT&T Broadband and the other cable providers said cable modem service was not a telecommunications service.

The FCC had always (i.e., since 1998) considered AOL and mom-and-pop dial-up ISPs as Title I "information services providers". I think we would all agree with that. Where the FCC made its mistake was, in 2002, it added facilities-based ISPs to the list and also considered them Title I information services providers.

But there is a world of difference between AOL ordering dial up lines over which you can access the Internet (a very clear example of separate content + transport) vs. an ISP that owns its own access network, whether telephone lines, coaxial cable or fiber.

So the AT&Ts, Verizons, and Comcasts of the world are not like AOL because of the physical infrastructure they own. The FCC should have drawn that distinction, but instead pretended those ISPs were like AOL and ignored the facilities they own (and control).

Hence the current mess we find ourselves in.

Downside: how does reclassifying ISPs change anything to peering agreements/disputes between ISPs and their peers/transit?

As far as I can tell, it would do absolutely nothing at all: if a peer brings too much unwanted traffic onto the ISPs' networks, ISPs would still be able to favor other transit providers and let the unwanted traffic congest through less desirable peers - all traffic to/from said peer gets treated exactly the same.

ISPs might not be able to force deals but they still get to pick who they peer with and in what quantities. Unless the government starts dictating peering and transit agreements, Network Neutrality still gets screwed and network operators have one more excuse to add yet another below-the-line fee on their bills.

If you want real competition, you need to to open up the infrastructure such as turning it into public-private partnership or co-op utility where many companies can lease the same shared first-mile network to reach subscribers, a bit like Australia's NBN, the UK's OpenReach, Google's pre-GoogleFiber ambitions, Utah's Utopia, Amsterdam's CityNet (very similar to Google's pre-GF scheme: city leases dark fiber to companies, companies co-locate fiber termination equipment in the city's walk-in closets), whatever France calls their scheme to let ISPs tack their own equipment on/near phone junction boxes, etc.

One first-mile public-utility telecom network with rates set at something like costs+10% for everyone. Once the transition completed, this opens up all markets to anyone who wants to take a shot at becoming an ISP of whatever size they want with whatever degree of involvement they want from leasing turnkey/wholesale end-to-end bitstream-level access from a bigger network (NBN, OpenReach, Canadian GAS/TPIA, I think AT&T also does wholesale broadband) to leasing dark fiber all over the place (CityNet) and do everything from end to end for total bandwidth and QoS control.

No, but it would be better than what there is right now. Improvement is better than now, and it doesn't have to fix all of the problems.

The issue I see here is all these companies are advocating for title 2, to regulate ISPs as a public utility. With public utilities comes more meters and price caps. So the people wanting netflix will be paying more under title 2, because they're using the most bandwidth. Think of leaving your water running all day because someone is taking a 2 hour shower. That's how internet will be billed under Title 2.

If you think ISPs are just going to accept less profit then you're high. If ISPs make less money because reclassification they WILL make it up elsewhere.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions

You asked about negative effects, not about what they are going to accept. Monopolists don't like antitrust restrictions in general. But it's their problem. If public wants to avoid monopoly caused problems with the internet, ISPs should be reclassified and FCC can do that.

Less money for them because of reducing monopoly and increasing competition is not a problem. If less money means that they can't operate - that's already a negative effect. But it doesn't look like that in this case.

But if someone does't do anything soon we are going to have the cable system soon.

How does this create competition?

With a capped profit margin on data, my bill would likely be lower than what I currently pay if I streamed 24/7. If it costs .01 cents a GB and they are stuck at a 10-15% markup, I'll gladly pay .015 cents a GB.

It creates potential for more competition by preventing anticompetitive abuse.

Being "in hell" already regardless of the intentions is a better alternative?

How does this meter work for local phone service? For long distance, yes, there has been a time meter or per minute charge, but for basic service, how does this work. Are we going to be charge per minute? By distance to site, what? Do we get charged when someone pushes unwanted advertising or updates?