Judges Skeptical of FCC's Neutrality Arguments → States rights

I think regulation of broadband ISPs should be left to local state DPUs. As we've seen time and time again that the federal government is the most incompetent regulator.

My opinion is the company that owns the lines should be restricted to transmission, the ISP side of things should be left to third party companies like it was in the '90s so you would get a bill from two companies, one from your cable company (regulated rate base on rates filed with state DPU) for transmission) and one from the ISP of your choice.

The same model was used to break up the electric industry, by separating generation from transmission but I think it would be much more practical in the ISP business since data is routable, electric is not.

And your model has yet to be proven to work for the electric and gas companies. The only thing those companies would have to do is set up another company to be the ISP- the same as power and gas companies do to be "deregulated" and under cut themselves while still making out a killing and laughing at everyone who thinks they're saving money.

That model has been an unmitigated disaster, here in New York, and in other locales. The locally owned utilities were compelled to sell all of their generating assets, which were all snapped up by out of state interests who proceeded to fire many of the local workers and then jack up the rates, while idling excess capacity to generate an artificial shortage that would justify further rate increases.

In theory we can now "choose" our electricity and gas providers, but the choice is meaningless. The price between providers is virtually the same, never more than a few percentage points off, which any economist worth his salt could have told you would have happened, since electricity and gas are commodities.

Transmission rates also went up, because the utilities lost access to the revenue they made from the exportation of excess generation capacity to other locales.

I'd love to go back to the regulated vertical monopoly of yesteryear for my electricity. So would all of the people who got laid off on both ends of the business (transmission and generation) during the shake up.

That would be ideal. I wish it could happen, and soon.

And that is perfectly fine. Let them setup an ISP and compete with other ISP's.

When this little internet thing started that is EXACTLY how it worked when you dialed in. You paid your phone bill which allowed you to use a modem to connect to the ISP of YOUR choice to connect to the internet.

That is exactly how it should be going now. We should have for all practical purposes 1 network that any ISP can get it's consumers from. Being that the only thing you truly need from an ISP is a public IP address it doesn't matter whom it comes from as long as it is routeable on the public internet.

The way it is now, many are lucky to have both cable and telco to pick as the connection. Some very lucky ones even have multiples of those to chose from. So let the states regulate them as the connection with regulated rate charges and then let us subscribe to whom we want for actual internet services whether that be their subsidiary ISP or some other company they are competing with.

The thing is - they're not competing at that point. They still have the power to under cut- They have a full network provider behind them giving money.

Deregulation as the power/gas companies doesn't work, and wouldn't work for ISPs.

And you are free to select your ISPs. AT&T allows reselling/wholesaling of U-Verse, TWC, COX, BrightHouse, and all others allow reselling of cable.

It's the fact that everyone wants the gov't to but in and take control when it's not needed.

Same here. First Energy Corp owns countless suppliers plus their massive brands, and everything in between, prices are about the same and any that are less- are all the ones that FE STILL owns.

it's not ideal. its horrible.

Just because NY and CA got it wrong does not mean it is a bad idea. Other states have implemented the separation fairly well. As far as I can tell in PA, it is working. I am opposed to vertical integration - either in a monopoly or not. It cuts down choice and creates huge barriers to entry.

Only to people who think the status quo is just dandy.

It works in PA? Is that why my per kWh rate in PA was virtually identical to New York?

Not exactly.

Your choices were limited to those ISPs who had a local access number, unless you intended to pay per minute long distance rates to be online.

Maybe that doesn't mean anything to an urbanite, but out in the sticks we were lucky to have one or two ISPs with a local number. Many locations had no local access number until the end of the 90s.

Pennsylvania is part of the PJM Interconnection. You would expect Pennsylvania pricing to equalize to its neighbors -- assuming adequate transmission capacity.

Edit: New York is not part of the PJM. However, if any power generators are connected to both NY and PA, then they can bid to supply both New York and in Pennsylvania. This would tend to drive prices towards equality -- assuming adequate transmission capacity.

You would expect to see a major divergence in price only if the transmission lines are maxed out. In that case, the power would be "trapped" in the surplus region, which will see lower prices than the deficit region. This tends to happen only a few days each year. It is visible to industrial and institutional customers who pay spot pricing, but not to residential or small-business customers who pay a regulated tariff that averages out the differences.

The other part of your electric bill is the infrastructure charge. That would be the part that would differ, depending on the utility and on the regulators.

Not totally companies such as MCI/UUTNet and others created massive dial-in banks for ISPs to "rent" to those ISPs that wanted local numbers. How do you think AOL became national so quick. Also Juno/NetZero still use those databanks.

It actually has been proved not to work period. If it worked companies like Dominion and First Energy Corp. would not control the markets as they do.

Actually PJM does NOT manage the auction of First Energy Corp in PA. they set their own pricing with the PUCs.

If the PUC is still involved in setting the price, then you can't exactly blame deregulation for Pennsylvania power prices ...

AOL never got a local access number for the town I grew up in. To the best of my knowledge Juno/NetZero still don't have one. We had no toll free online option until a local company got off the ground in 1996. Sidney New York (population 5,700) is not on MCI's radar, not then, nor now. That area is still served by Frontier for dial-up (and DSL) services, but that's it.

Incidentally, back in the day Frontier found a way to bone all the local ISPs when they decided to get into the business. They had been allowing them to use call forwarding to artificially expand their footprints, i.e., you call forward from 607-334 (Norwich) to 607-967 (Bainbridge) where your modems are actually located.

Once Frontier decided to get into the ISP business they filed a rate change request with the PSC, turning this type of call forwarding service into a per-minute charge. Nobody caught it in time, the rate change was approved, and most of the local ISPs were bankrupted in short order. Business is cruel....

Why are you posting all over this thread? No one's even listening to you.

If that area was not covered by MCI as a POP then there was more of an issue. As MCI now VZ Business as POPs in villages of maybe 20-100 people. Level3 does as well.

And that issue with Call forwarding was always billed like that in most areas and was billed like that from Ameritech in early 2000s.

Actually you can when First Energy Corp OWNS most of PA. First Energy's main and only goal is to return a profit on for their shareholders. www.firstenergycorp.com Look at their map of how large they are in PA. They are the core problem of why dereg on power companies do NOT work. Between them and DOM they control the market.

If that was to me yes people are replying to me. And opening up the cable lines like power and gas does not work. its been proven over and over again. States that do not open up their power lines actually have lower power costs and its less BS than those that open them. You still deal with the main provider/network owner. You save nothing.