FCC's Secret Neutrality Deal Won't Apply To Wireless Leak: Google and Verizon crafted skeleton of looming neutrality agreement As we noted yesterday, the FCC has been quietly meeting with major broadband (and Google) lobbyists in order to hash out a neutrality deal that appears to be little more than empty rhetoric with some mile-wide loopholes. With political pressure for a good-looking technology policy "win" mounting and an FCC chairman seemingly incapable of making hard decisions, the FCC seems to be ignoring their own supposed dedication to transparency in order to strike a neutrality agreement behind closed doors. Today an anonymous source appears to have spoken to both the Washington Post and Bloomberg, noting that this closed door deal was actually crafted privately by Verizon and Google, then presented on a platter to the FCC (though AT&T's top lobbyist oddly denies having any part in this Google/Verizon presentation). While the deal is certainly not a finished product yet, the source informs both news outlets that this deal in its current state will not apply to wireless networks, an odd choice given wireless's looming role as a mainstream connectivity option: The compromise as described would restrict Verizon from selectively slowing Internet content that travels over its wires, but wouldn’t apply such limits to Internet use on mobile phones, according to the people, who asked not to be identified before an announcement. Obviously consumer groups weren't happy with the news, left sulking at home in less-expensive suits while the industry's power players continue to privately dictate U.S. telecom policy. Consumer firm Public Knowledge quickly issued a statement lamenting the Verizon/Google closed-room deal as "meaningless": “The deal between Verizon and Google about how to manage Internet traffic is deeply regrettable and should be considered meaningless. As a legal agreement, it is not binding on either company. . . The point of a network neutrality rule is to prevent big companies from dividing the Internet between them. We do not need rules to protect Google and Verizon, but we need a rule to protect the customers of Google and Verizon and the competitors of Google and Verizon." Of course as we've continually noted after more than a decade of watching this industry, absolutely nothing will change on the broadband front until the country decides to tackle corporate influence over the legislative process. The majority of the telecom rules currently on the books protecting this industry's duopoly were written by telecom lobbyists, so any shock at neutrality rules following this path seems disingenuous. Political pressure is pushing the FCC to finalize this neutrality agreement within the next few weeks, the FCC knowing they have an even tougher fight ahead over partial Title II reclassification. However, should the neutrality deal prove to be, as rumored, a largely empty closed-door deal negotiated solely by industry power players, FCC boss Julius Genachowski can expect any remaining consumer credibility on the telecom front to be null and void.
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  Z80APremium
join:2009-11-23 | Change? Yeah right. The only thing that has changed is who the lobbyists make the checks out too. | |
|  | | | Re: Change? Yeah right. Well, it is "Change in Washington" as promised. :P | |
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 ·Comcast
1 edit | Re: Change? Yeah right. said by PapaMidnight:Well, it is "Change in Washington" as promised. :P Of course, why would it change. Washington is owned by big Corporate | |
| | | | Z80APremium
join:2009-11-23 | Re: Change? Yeah right. And big labor and everyone else with a thick checkbook | |
| | | | | | | Re: Change? Yeah right. "Big labor" is the product of a large group of people coming together and agreeing to pool their individual resources to make their voice heard in government. This is in stark contrast to a corporation, a fictional "entity" whose entire funding is dependent on revenue provided to them by customers for service entirely unrelated to the corporation's political machinations.
Your incessant whining over labor's influence on government is asinine, given the pale shadow of its former glory that is the labor union, and given that a labor group whose leaders are chosen by direct votes by its members is the very essence of democracy. | |
| | | | | | | | Re: Change? Yeah right. said by sonicmerlin:Your incessant whining over labor's influence on government is asinine, given the pale shadow of its former glory that is the labor union Unions have never had more influence than they have now over the Democratic party. If you don't see that, you're just sticking your head in the sand. | |
| | | | | | | Z80APremium
join:2009-11-23 Reviews:
·Cox HSI
| Re: Change? Yeah right. This is true. You need only look at Sacramento where the Union has owned the legislature since Gov. Moonbeam Brown brought them in in the 1970's starting us down this road of devastation and insolvency.
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"Our goal (was to make) a billion phones Flash-enabled by 2010...We're actually going to get 1 billion Flash-enabled phones by 2009." -Adobe Chief Technology Officer Kevin Lynch in Nov 2008. | |
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| | | |  PacketeersPremium
join:2005-06-18
Forest Hills, NY
kudos:1 | big labor - please, I'm in IBEW
and even I don't believe that,
especially now that the
economy is in the toilet,
all unions are powerless. | |
| | | | | | Z80APremium
join:2009-11-23 | Re: Change? Yeah right. All you have to do is look at State pension costs and know that the unions are anything but powerless. | |
| | | | | | | | | Re: Change? Yeah right. And, furthermore, the eradication of non-union pensions shows how powerless workers are without union representation. Unions are trying hard to uphold a middle-class standard of living, while people like you are working hard to lower our standard of living by denigrating unions and government workers. Without unions and government workers' benefits to put competitive pressure on private employers, we would all (even children) be the working poor in 60-hour-work-week jobs. If you think union workers and government workers have such a phenomenal deal, wouldn't someone be really stupid not to get one of those jobs--unless, of course, one is an employer. Maybe that explains your efforts to lower the benefits and living standards of middle-class people; maybe you're hoping to employ them at ever lower compensations--with you taking the difference. | |
| | | | | | | | Z80APremium
join:2009-11-23 Reviews:
·Cox HSI
4 edits | Re: Change? Yeah right. Public employee unions are bankrupting States and then bribing legislatures to steal even more money from the productive part of society. In California, costs of public employees have gone up over 2,000% over the last 10 years alone. Over 15,000 public employee union members get pensions over $100K a year and increase with inflation. Some retirees retire with 90% pensions so they save up their accrued vacation and bullshit "personal days", unused sick time, etc and take it all in the last year to game the system, sometimes getting pensions that pay more than when they were actually showing up to work and they get paid forever...for doing NOTHING which is only slightly more than they were doing when actually "working".
Even Jerry 'Gov. Moonbeam' Brown, the top hippie who started California down the road to destruction when he allowed public employee unions has pledged to try and reign in the greed. He astonishingly thinks we have all forgotten about Rose Bird and the Supremes, decimation of budgets and massive taxation that led to the Prop 13 taxpayer revolt as he runs for office again. Don't give me bullshit about how the bloodsucking unions are just protecting poor middle class workers under the thumb of a tyrannical employer. They are lazy and greedy and taxpayers who actually have to work for a living have had enough. And absolutely, I and every other taxpayer should be keeping that difference. We EARNED it in the first place.
The violin playing for poor public employee union members is over. The public knows the truth of their greed and is sickened by it. The Revolution comes in November.
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"Our goal (was to make) a billion phones Flash-enabled by 2010...We're actually going to get 1 billion Flash-enabled phones by 2009." -Adobe Chief Technology Officer Kevin Lynch in Nov 2008. | |
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| | | | | | | | Please understand that each group of working people at whom people like you sequentially get angry for having something, are sitting in vast numbers with their little hoards in the vast shadow the very small number of Owners of Capital who have almost everything. And they continually have a larger percentage of it.
See here: »nightman1.wordpress.com/2009/07/···to-work/
Republicans have for thirty years been chipping away at the set of circumstances and benefits that made it possible for working people to have at least a middle class life in the period 1945 through 1980. That is why real wages have remain unchanged for those thirty years. See the above post.
In the pension area, first it was a federal law permitting companies to replace defined benefit plans with defined contribution plans, followed by relentless pressure to make that change. Lot of companies did, to the detriment of employees everywhere. (Defined benefit plans are generally agreed to be the better deal by far for employees.)
Now the same push is being made against defined benefit plans in state and local government. As always, the low-to-middle wage workers who are the one who mostly benefit from those plans are depicted as some form of greedy fat cats who need to be brought down.
This will probably work. The real fat cats have got us fighting over crumbs while they suck up all the cream. Notice the tens of millions and hundreds of millions of dollar salaries of bankers, etc. Notice the vast wealth of many billionaires. The percentage of the USA's national wealth owned by persons wit the top 1 percent of income is now greater than it was at anytime since the Roaring Twenties.
However you are situated, if the US economy stays on this slow march to being a place with a small number of very rich people and a very large number of very poor people, you will not like the result. That kind of vast disparity of wealth is inherently destabilizing. Check out the history of Guatemala. | |
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| | | the only way we will ever change this governement is to make sure not to vote for those who we dislike.and it really looks like we need to somehow vote in a new party and vote out the old.
and i mean democrats & republicans.neither one cares about people they only care about money. | |
| | | Z80APremium
join:2009-11-23 | Re: Change? Yeah right. That is difficult when politicians campaign on one thing then pull a 180 once in office. | |
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| | E-mail. I wonder how many on here actively participate in informing elected officials of how they feel about things as to affect policy and lawmaking.
I feel i'm in the minority with that, my elected officials get frequent e-mails from me on a variety of topics. This will now be one of them.
- A
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LETS GO METS! | |
| | | | Re: E-mail. I do, and I get a nice form letter. Sometimes not even about what I wrote to them in the first place. | |
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 DavePR
join:2008-06-04
Canyon Country, CA
 ·DSL EXTREME
| Google? They have no wires. They have no spectrum. Why does Google get a place at the table? They don't have any pipes.
These Democrats are as shameless (if not more so) than the Republicans, when it comes to kissing up to the fat cats. They are definitely more dangerous right now.
What business/government wants is complete control over what we see and hear, and the ability to more easily manipulate us with mass media. It is just as insane to put all communications on the internet, as it would be to rip up all the train tracks and make everybody drive cars.
Now the FCC is in the process of making all FM radio digital, and forcing the weaker (and more interesting) analog stations off the air. They've already made TV harder than ever to get.
All that being said, there will never be enough wireless spectrum to do real time HDTV on handheld devices. That won't stop them from trying, and destroying what's left of "free media" in the process. | |
| | Sammer
join:2005-12-22
Canonsburg, PA | Re: Google? They have no wires. They have no spectrum. said by DavePR:Why does Google get a place at the table? They don't have any pipes. From what I understand Google actually does own a significant amount of dark fiber. | |
| | | DavePR
join:2008-06-04
Canyon Country, CA | Re: Google? They have no wires. They have no spectrum. Them and half the people in broadband..
Still, why Google and not Yahoo as well, for instance? | |
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 camaro92Question everythingPremium
join:2008-04-05
Westfield, MA
·Comcast
| Duh Becuase wired internet has been saturated for years,just contract jumpers now,but when it comes to wireless lots of people left to sign up and then when there wireless networks start to really crumble under the load they start throttling, prioritizing just about anything they can to avoid spending any money to beef up there networks,and since no regulation,neutrality in the picture now it's going to be a field day. | |
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