Comedian John Oliver has weighed in on net neutrality -- and in the process has broken the FCC website for a second time. Oliver originally chimed in on the subject back in 2014, when debate over what would be the FCC's 2015 net neutrality rules was at its peak. Oliver, and his HBO show "Last Week Tonight," was a major reason for the 4 million public comments on the FCC's website (mostly in favor of the rules). The FCC's comment website ultimately collapsed under the load of annoyed viewers.
With new FCC boss Ajit Pai now looking to kill the rules beginning with a vote on May 18, Oliver returned with a new piece on Pai's efforts. And the FCC's website has collapsed under the load a second time.
"Every internet group needs to come together like you successfully did three years ago," Oliver said. "Every subculture must join as one. Gamers, YouTube celebrities, Instagram models, and even Tom from MySpace, if you're still alive."
Oliver even implored "Donald Trump's internet fans on sites like 4Chan and Reddit" to lend a hand given that "this subject is one of the things that we actually really agree on."
As noted previously, the FCC will vote on May 18 (inevitably along 2-1 partisan lines) to open an NPRM to discuss rolling back the rules. From there, the public will have another period to make their thoughts heard ahead of what's expected to be a final vote to kill the net neutrality protections later this year. At that point Pai will need to convince the courts that the telecom market changed substantively enough in the last two years to warrant a wholesale reversal of the rules (it hasn't).
Until the there is enough market demand for foreign investors (beyond Altice) to fund a competitive venture that offers 25Mbit (or more) to a national footprint, nothing will change. Competition is the only metric that matters. Neutrality is fun to talk about, but offers a negligible impact to the metric we lag behind upon globally - $ per Mbit. It's like the media's obsession with interest rate policy - you took the debt from $10 trillion to $20 trillion to accomplish what exactly? It took $4 in debt to create $1 in GDP. And real wages, adjusted for inflation, still haven't rose from the early 1980s.
Vote the people out of office who have banned muni-network deployments. Reform video franchise laws. Offer tax incentives for FTTH providers. Reform pole attach regulations.
