Broadband providers file lawsuits against FCC to crush net neutrality rules

[waclark]

SNIP
Congress empowers agencies run by experts in the industry they oversee to manage how that industry operates.

You mean like the head of the ATF who couldn't define an assault weapon and stated that he "isn't a firearms expert" or the Sec of Education who cannot define what a woman is?

Also, I hate to tell you, but the people running the FCC are lawyers, not industry experts. They're experts in telcom law, but I doubt many of them had any experience running a telcommunication company.

 

[bclaymiles]

If all the stock holders and hedgefunders were killed this would not be an issue or an argument .. everyone would have equal access and no-one would try to build a poor people internet and rich people internet. anyone arguing otherwise is rich C##t trying to be better than poor people

The largest stockholders in the United States are...the citizens of the United States. In other words, 61% of the American public owns stocks. 158 million people.

Arguing in favor of killing almost half the US population is not a good look.

Nobody is trying to build a "poor people internet and rich people internet".

Anti-capitalism seems to be very much in vogue on techspot. The mind boggles at the vast number of capitalist companies that are involved in making it so that you can post your thoughts here.

 

[Mark Fuller]

There are always big players. It is NOT an oligarchy. An oligarchy will come only when regulations sufficiently restrict competitive innovation. That is always to the benefit of the big players who can afford it and influence politicians. A good example are utilities. Prior to utility regulation, these so-called "natural monopolies" were actually numerous and competitive, particularly along geographical margins. They were turned into de jure permanent nonopolies (with competition made illegal) by the very same type of regulation the FCC wants to use to impose their "net neutrality".

I don't know what to tell you, but according to the science of economics, It does not require any type of regulation to create an oligarchy. It is strictly who is in control of the resources.

 

[Mark Fuller]

There are always big players. It is NOT an oligarchy. An oligarchy will come only when regulations sufficiently restrict competitive innovation. That is always to the benefit of the big players who can afford it and influence politicians. A good example are utilities. Prior to utility regulation, these so-called "natural monopolies" were actually numerous and competitive, particularly along geographical margins. They were turned into de jure permanent nonopolies (with competition made illegal) by the very same type of regulation the FCC wants to use to impose their "net neutrality".

Moreover, the leaders of these giant corporations are notorious for their ultra expensive lifestyles, which means that if they want to pay their bills, they have to get hold of every penny they can even if it means stifling competition.

 

[Endymio]

As usual, the Republicans voted in favor of big business, and the Democrats voted in favor of everyday working people. It's been that way for decades...

Utter nonsense. Net Neutrality is backwards beyond belief: it stifles progress and competition, defies the laws of economics -- all to solve a "problem" that doesn't exist. We've had 30 years of Internet without these intrusive new regulations, and "everyday working people" have had no trouble whatsoever accessing the data and services they wish. And more government regulations and reporting requirements ultimately means higher costs for consumers.

Imagine an ISP attempting to offer an new ultralow-latency service ideal for something like remote neurosurgery -- these rules bar them from it -- unless it also carries Grandma's emails and Little Chucky's Counterstrike packets ... all at the same price.

And let's not forget the bonanza these new rules will be for tort attorneys. We'll see a rash of class-action lawsuits, each of which will earn them hundreds of millions in legal fees, paid by ISPs who will then recover those costs from whom? The "everyday working man".

 

[gamerk2]

You mean like the head of the ATF who couldn't define an assault weapon and stated that he "isn't a firearms expert" or the Sec of Education who cannot define what a woman is?

Also, I hate to tell you, but the people running the FCC are lawyers, not industry experts. They're experts in telcom law, but I doubt many of them had any experience running a telcommunication company.

The people at the top are still political appointees, but the rank and file tend to be experts.

I also note the trend of putting political appointees designed purely to push political decisions is a natural result of Congress being incapable of doing literally anything. Which itself is a point against letting Congress handle rulemaking.

Your last point is the most concerning, since it implies you want telecom friendly representation on the agency deigned to oversee the telecom industry.

 

[gamerk2]

Utter nonsense. Net Neutrality is backwards beyond belief: it stifles progress and competition, defies the laws of economics -- all to solve a "problem" that doesn't exist. We've had 30 years of Internet without these intrusive new regulations, and "everyday working people" have had no trouble whatsoever accessing the data and services they wish. And more government regulations and reporting requirements ultimately means higher costs for consumers.

Not really. We've had numerous instances over the years of ISPs trying to gate content, and ISPs in certain regions *still* try and charge more for certain content, even though their networks can fully handle the additional traffic.

Imagine an ISP attempting to offer an new ultralow-latency service ideal for something like remote neurosurgery -- these rules bar them from it -- unless it also carries Grandma's emails and Little Chucky's Counterstrike packets ... all at the same price.

Putting aside the sheer idiocy of connecting surgery equipment to the internet, how is this a problem again? A *public* network should grant everyone the same level of access, irrespective of the type of data being accessed.

And let's not forget the bonanza these new rules will be for tort attorneys. We'll see a rash of class-action lawsuits, each of which will earn them hundreds of millions in legal fees, paid by ISPs who will then recover those costs from whom? The "everyday working man".

Simple solution: Force companies to pay their own legal costs for time-wasting lawsuits. Do it once and they'll all get the message.

 

[dezomit]

So you prefer to elect known low IQ politicians who don't know what to do instead of letting experts in the field do their work? Would you prefer to elect every firefighter or doctor personally? Would you prefer to elect every person who works in the country?

FYI, you did elect the FCC head, just not directly.

Yes Dr. Fauci I do not need unelected people making decisions

 

[Endymio]

Not really. We've had numerous instances over the years of ISPs trying to gate content

Name one.

Putting aside the sheer idiocy of connecting surgery equipment to the internet...

Hello, and welcome to the 21st Century. We have airliners, 100,000 ton ships, and nuclear reactors connected to the Internet. The only "idiocy" here is thinking a person in need of emergency surgery here must make do with "local talent" for the operation, when a world-class specialist is only 1 millisecond away, thanks to our modern communication network.

A *public* network should grant everyone the same level of access

Yet our "public" roads have HOV lanes and toll roads, our air transport system has charter airliners and paid priority seating, and many "public" shops, restaurants, clubs, and online websites and videogames have paid memberships granting faster, expanded, or greater access to their products and services; and even ISPs today already charge more for higher tiers of service -- more bandwidth, more redundancy, faster restoration time in case of an outage.

20 years ago when this ridiculous net neutrality concept was born, people were spouting the same fearmongering tripe: "if we don't pass a law RIGHT NOW, ISPs will be blocking your favorite websites and forcing you to watch theirs". But guess what? It never happened.

 

[dirtyferret]

I love all the gullible *****s who are on the side of big business rather than the consumer because they think big business has their interest? They are in a cult and like any other cult member, will never see they are in a cult until they are out of it

 

[bclaymiles]

The people at the top are still political appointees, but the rank and file tend to be experts.

Those with useful expertise in telecommunications are going to be employed in the industry.

Most of those in the agency are bureaucrats, with only and exactly as much expertise as is required for them to perform their bureaucratic functions.

What few experts there are, are not the ones who make policy decisions - the political appointees do that. So you're back to square one.

I also note the trend of putting political appointees designed purely to push political decisions is a natural result of Congress being incapable of doing literally anything. Which itself is a point against letting Congress handle rulemaking.

It always surprises me that people have this notion that congress/government is supposed to work like a well-oiled machine (I'm speaking of the US). It is not. It was DESIGNED not to be easy to make changes. It is baked into the US system of governance. There are roadblocks everywhere, to prevent the accumulation of power, and to prevent major changes without the consent of the governed.

Your last point is the most concerning, since it implies you want telecom friendly representation on the agency deigned to oversee the telecom industry.

You previously wrote "Congress empowers agencies run by experts in the industry they oversee to manage how that industry operates."

"experts in the industry" means people who know how that industry operates and functions. The only way you have genuine expertise in any industry is by having worked in the industry. Generally speaking, people don't devote their expertise towards something that they are _not_ "friendly" towards.

The corollary here appears to be that you want people in the agency who are hostile to the industry.

 

[ZedRM]

Dear ISP's,

Your predatory, lowlife business models are pathetic and need to end. You all are just bum-hurt because the government is actually doing it's job for once and forcing you to play nice and fair with consumers.

Hopefully a smart and wise judge puts you all in your rightful place.

 

[ZedRM]

The corollary here appears to be that you want people in the agency who are hostile to the industry.

No. What we want is an industry that is not hostile to the consumer, does NOT practice predatory business tactics and provides a reasonable service for a fair price.

The USA has some of the slowest internet speeds, for some of the highest prices compared to most of it's peer nations.

 

[ZedRM]

I love all the gullible *****s who are on the side of big business rather than the consumer

Right? It's like they have their collective heads in the sand, or their bums(maybe both?). People really need to get a clue.

 

[m3tavision]

Hello, and welcome to the 21st Century. We have airliners, 100,000 ton ships, and nuclear reactors connected to the Internet. The only "idiocy" here is thinking a person in need of emergency surgery here must make do with "local talent" for the operation, when a world-class specialist is only 1 millisecond away, thanks to our modern communication network.


Yet our "public" roads have HOV lanes and toll roads, our air transport system has charter airliners and paid priority seating, and many "public" shops, restaurants, clubs, and online websites and videogames have paid memberships granting faster, expanded, or greater access to their products and services; and even ISPs today already charge more for higher tiers of service -- more bandwidth, more redundancy, faster restoration time in case of an outage.

20 years ago when this ridiculous net neutrality concept was born, people were spouting the same fearmongering tripe: "if we don't pass a law RIGHT NOW, ISPs will be blocking your favorite websites and forcing you to watch theirs". But guess what? It never happened.

Government and Utilities are 100% about "local people".

We the People... lay out regulations and framework from which Companies work within. Comcast didn't create the internet, We the People are the ones who laid the pipe down (UUNET) and ISPs just connect "local people" to it.

When you use dial-up it's just making a connection from your house to the nearest point of connection.... That is all these cable companies do... any City can do this for nearly free, but aren't allowed due to illegal lawyering from Monopolies in the Industry.

Understand, all Internet Companies do.. is CONNECT YOU TO THE INTERNET. They do not need to know what you are accessing, or have any right to track or have any data about the end-user. (They all need to be broken up like Ma Bell.)



Does the Electric Company charge you differently for what you are using your electricity on...? They charge a RATE based on end-user consumption. The Internet should be the same way... a Utility based on how much you use, just like electricity, water and gas...!

Period!

 

[Endymio]

Does the Electric Company charge you differently for what you are using your electricity on...? ... The Internet should be the same way...

Um, actually yes, many electric companies charge commercial clients for how the electricity is being used, and (even more often) when. Even some water utilities do the same -- water used to irrigate or fill swimming pools, for instance (and thus doesn't flow back into the sewer system) is billed at a lower rate.

In any case, you're misrepresenting the situation. The issue isn't what you're using the packets for, but rather how fast they're being delivered to you. Everyone from Doordash to Amazon to the US Postal Service charges more for faster delivery. Why should ISPs be barred from doing the same?

When you use dial-up it's just making a connection from your house to the nearest point of connection.... That is all these cable companies do... any City can do this for nearly free, but aren't allowed due to illegal lawyering from Monopolies in the Industry.

This demonstrates a near-criminal level of ignorance of the telecom industry. Once your home packets reach that "nearest point of connection", do you believe they magically warp to web servers in Oregon, Singapore, and New Delhi? And no city in the world has ever managed to operate an ISP for "nearly free" -- in fact, when most cities DID operate their own private cable networks, prices were far higher, and quality of service far worse than we have today.

 

[misermine078]

Net neutrality is not anything good for any of us. The legislation that Congress rejected would have given the FCC complete control over the regulation of all Internet services. That means nothing good from what I read about net neutrality. There are several things that are just not ok that they can do with that and it's not to help us.

 

[misermine078]

Government and Utilities are 100% about "local people".

We the People... lay out regulations and framework from which Companies work within. Comcast didn't create the internet, We the People are the ones who laid the pipe down (UUNET) and ISPs just connect "local people" to it.

When you use dial-up it's just making a connection from your house to the nearest point of connection.... That is all these cable companies do... any City can do this for nearly free, but aren't allowed due to illegal lawyering from Monopolies in the Industry.

Understand, all Internet Companies do.. is CONNECT YOU TO THE INTERNET. They do not need to know what you are accessing, or have any right to track or have any data about the end-user. (They all need to be broken up like Ma Bell.)



Does the Electric Company charge you differently for what you are using your electricity on...? They charge a RATE based on end-user consumption. The Internet should be the same way... a Utility based on how much you use, just like electricity, water

Good! Net Neutrality is a power grab by the government. I support Net Neutrality, but not through an FCC rule that gives them carte blanc over our internet. It needs to be passed through congress by a bill that contains nothing, no other fat, but a couple of paragraphs declaring Net Neutrality. This current method is not what you think it will be.

The republicans rejected it so I don't understand how this is even a thing. They will have too much control over too many things with how that legislation reads. I was worried about this because there have been too many things happening all at once that seem too convenient to be coincidence. Get ready cause it's about to get insane.

 

[bclaymiles]

Government and Utilities are 100% about "local people".

We the People... lay out regulations and framework from which Companies work within. Comcast didn't create the internet, We the People are the ones who laid the pipe down (UUNET) and ISPs just connect "local people" to it.

Your understanding of the history and structure of the internet is severely distorted. UUNET didn't create the internet either; they were privately funded, meaning, not publicly or government funded. They were--the horror!-- a commercial business. In fact, the government kept an extremely tight grip on ARPANET, the predecessor of the internet, and essentially had to be forced (by forward-thinking legislators, which includes, yes, Al Gore) to deregulate and allow the commercialization of the internet. If it wasn't for the removal of government regulation, there wouldn't be an internet, at least not at the massive and pervasive scale it currently is. It would still be limited to researchers and universities and government agencies.

ISP's do not just connect end users to the internet. That should be evident by the letter "S" in the name. ISP's include peering exchanges, and the massive backhaul providers who provide the links that make the internet a global network. Most of those don't have any 'local people' as their direct customers, yet they're still ISP's. 'Local' ISP's pay to connect to the peering exchange ISP's, who in turn pay to connect from one backbone network ISP to another - though most of them have mutual peering arrangements that tend to cancel out the interexchange costs, since a backbone is only as useful as its ability to connect to other backbones. They're all ISP's.

When you use dial-up it's just making a connection from your house to the nearest point of connection.... That is all these cable companies do...

Setting aside that there's only a tiny fraction of people who still use dialup, that is literally not all that the cable companies do...

any City can do this for nearly free, but aren't allowed due to illegal lawyering from Monopolies in the Industry.

"for nearly free". Interesting concept. A company puts all the money and effort into building infrastructure, and you believe city governments should be able to just take control of it?

Sounds rather Venezuelan.

Understand, all Internet Companies do.. is CONNECT YOU TO THE INTERNET. They do not need to know what you are accessing, or have any right to track or have any data about the end-user. (They all need to be broken up like Ma Bell.)

And where and what is this "INTERNET" you speak of? Do you think it is a government controlled...entity? It's not. The internet is the sum of the traffic of all of the ISP's and all of the ISP's users. There is no internet without ISP's.

I don't know what the digression into tracking has to do with this discussion; that's not really what net neutrality claims to protect against.

You say they should all be "broken up". Name the companies that should be broken up. The only legal means by which companies can be broken up is by the federal government via anti-trust laws. Those laws concern monopolies. What company or companies have a monopoly? (Yes, I'm aware of the separate matter of 'monopoly' in terms of choices of ISP's for the end user, but that is largely a function of the huge amounts of money needed to build separate infrastructure per provider)

Does the Electric Company charge you differently for what you are using your electricity on...? They charge a RATE based on end-user consumption. The Internet should be the same way... a Utility based on how much you use, just like electricity, water and gas...!

Period!

Internet service is delivered to your home the same way as gas and water and electricity (well, not exactly because it's data not amps, or cu. ft, or btu's). You pay a monthly fee, the price almost always determined by the bandwidth that's delivered, and possibly with caps on the volume of data you can exchange for that monthly fee. Not at all dissimilar to how the power company charges you more the more electricity or natural gas you use.

The whole 'net neutrality' argument is based on something that doesn't even take place to any meaningful degree, even though net neutrality hasn't been in place for more than seven years. Name an existing ISP that charges you extra or restricts your bandwidth specifically when connecting to facebook, or instagram, or youtube, or netflix, or any other destination. Hell, I challenge anybody who's participated in this discussion to name their ISP that currently does that on your connection.

Public opinion on net neutrality is the primary driver of net neutrality. Consumers balk (or rather, go bonkers at the idea) of ISP's charging more to use Netflix than to use Sal and Nancy's Restaurant website to order a meal for delivery.

 

[m3tavision]

Your understanding of the history and structure of the internet is severely distorted. UUNET didn't create the internet either; they were privately funded, meaning, not publicly or government funded. They were--the horror!-- a commercial business. In fact, the government kept an extremely tight grip on ARPANET, the predecessor of the internet, and essentially had to be forced (by forward-thinking legislators, which includes, yes, Al Gore) to deregulate and allow the commercialization of the internet. If it wasn't for the removal of government regulation, there wouldn't be an internet, at least not at the massive and pervasive scale it currently is. It would still be limited to researchers and universities and government agencies.

ISP's do not just connect end users to the internet. That should be evident by the letter "S" in the name. ISP's include peering exchanges, and the massive backhaul providers who provide the links that make the internet a global network. Most of those don't have any 'local people' as their direct customers, yet they're still ISP's. 'Local' ISP's pay to connect to the peering exchange ISP's, who in turn pay to connect from one backbone network ISP to another - though most of them have mutual peering arrangements that tend to cancel out the interexchange costs, since a backbone is only as useful as its ability to connect to other backbones. They're all ISP's.


Setting aside that there's only a tiny fraction of people who still use dialup, that is literally not all that the cable companies do...



"for nearly free". Interesting concept. A company puts all the money and effort into building infrastructure, and you believe city governments should be able to just take control of it?

Sounds rather Venezuelan.



And where and what is this "INTERNET" you speak of? Do you think it is a government controlled...entity? It's not. The internet is the sum of the traffic of all of the ISP's and all of the ISP's users. There is no internet without ISP's.

I don't know what the digression into tracking has to do with this discussion; that's not really what net neutrality claims to protect against.

You say they should all be "broken up". Name the companies that should be broken up. The only legal means by which companies can be broken up is by the federal government via anti-trust laws. Those laws concern monopolies. What company or companies have a monopoly? (Yes, I'm aware of the separate matter of 'monopoly' in terms of choices of ISP's for the end user, but that is largely a function of the huge amounts of money needed to build separate infrastructure per provider)



Internet service is delivered to your home the same way as gas and water and electricity (well, not exactly because it's data not amps, or cu. ft, or btu's). You pay a monthly fee, the price almost always determined by the bandwidth that's delivered, and possibly with caps on the volume of data you can exchange for that monthly fee. Not at all dissimilar to how the power company charges you more the more electricity or natural gas you use.

The whole 'net neutrality' argument is based on something that doesn't even take place to any meaningful degree, even though net neutrality hasn't been in place for more than seven years. Name an existing ISP that charges you extra or restricts your bandwidth specifically when connecting to facebook, or instagram, or youtube, or netflix, or any other destination. Hell, I challenge anybody who's participated in this discussion to name their ISP that currently does that on your connection.

Public opinion on net neutrality is the primary driver of net neutrality. Consumers balk (or rather, go bonkers at the idea) of ISP's charging more to use Netflix than to use Sal and Nancy's Restaurant website to order a meal for delivery.

People who have to line-item veto another's post... can't make their argument. (You are more concerned about minutia, than Public sentiment.)

The United States Government paid for ALL of the backbone pipe. For many years most of it laid dark while ISP was forcing people to pay more because of *congestion*... instead of lighting up that fiber...


Your strawman aside, Nobody is saying that running the Internet Utilities would be free... and that is your whole backwards argument. Your argument simply doesn't work. No Utilities are free. YOu must pay.

Internet as a Utility:
Those who use moAr of the internet and thus use more heat, use more microswitches, use more data and "moAr" bandwidth... pay more!


Additionally, States that Tax individuals & companies based on certain usage, have local issues. Though it is illegal to sell a product to you at a different cost to me, based on what I want to use it for. That is discrimination.


Everyone paying the same price while a family of 12 down the street use all the bandwidth in the neighborhood is just Socialism.. Internet as a Utility means you pay for what you use... If you want priority packets then ISPs can compete for that business.

I ran one of the most trafficked fido-net servers in the world... back in the day. It cost at lot of personal money before the government grants stepped in.

 

[Endymio]

The United States Government paid for ALL of the backbone pipe.

You seriously don't believe this absurd piffle, do you?

Nobody is saying that running the Internet Utilities would be free...

Actually, to quote you directly, you claimed government could operate the Internet "nearly free" ... if it wasn't for those evil corporations.

 

[m3tavision]

You seriously don't believe this absurd piffle, do you?


Actually, to quote you directly, you claimed government could operate the Internet "nearly free" ... if it wasn't for those evil corporations.

The early backbone of the internet was laid down with government grants.

Then quote where I say that, plz.
I said local cities can hook their neighborhoods up for nearly free... and many municipalities did exactly that... and have Internet for resident at uber-low cost. Comcast and others illegally lobbied to stop Cities in masse exodus across America to do the same thing.



More than 20% of the cost of running an ISP is in illegally tracking and datamining and maintaining customers data, not in providing Internet service.

 

[Endymio]

The early backbone of the internet was laid down with government grants.

Utterly false. The "early backbone" was the long-haul copper cable laid by (pre-breakup) AT&T ... and paid for by them. Early WANS like Bitnet, UUNET, etc utilized leased-line services provided by AT&T.

What's even more absurd is that, even if your statement was true, that "early backbone" of antiquated copper cable has now been 100% replaced. The longhaul fiber network and residential PON networks built within the last 30 years have been done with private funding.

Then quote where I say that, plz.
I said local cities can hook their neighborhoods up for nearly free...

You claimed this would be "nearly free", and furthermore implied that, once "hooked up", those neighborhoods would magically be part of the Internet at large, with zero additional effort or expense.

No city in the US -- then or now -- ever provided such service 'nearly free'. And in fact the exact opposite was true. Pricing in those city- and county-mandated monopolies was so high that voters eventually rebelled, and forced the deregulation that today allows most of the nation at least a certain degree of choice.

 

[bclaymiles]

People who have to line-item veto another's post... can't make their argument. (You are more concerned about minutia, than Public sentiment.)

Bizarro world. Making counter-arguments to a string of incorrect claims somehow means that I can't make my argument.

No, it's called making an argument. Your post was filled top to bottom with evidence that you have little actual understanding of what you're talking about. There would be far less for me to comment on and correct if you made claims that were supportable.

What I'm concerned about are facts, not fiction. So yes, I will continue to counter the baseless claims you keep making. And I'd encourage you - and others - to actually do some reading, first.

The United States Government paid for ALL of the backbone pipe. For many years most of it laid dark while ISP was forcing people to pay more because of *congestion*... instead of lighting up that fiber...

Again, you're making wild claims that aren't supportable. The "backbone" that the US govt paid for was nothing more than it leasing access on existing telco voice copper. At 56 kilobits/s. Between Universities and government agencies. None of it 'laid dark'. There were no to-the-curb ISP's back in the NSFNET days. There was congestion because the capacity hadn't been built yet, because the small amount of actual long-haul carrying capacity was originally built to carry voice traffic. The government didn't pay hundreds of billions of dollars back in the 1980's and early '90's to have the exabytes of data-carrying capacity we have today. The evil telcos/ISPs did not leave it all dark in order to squeeze the as-yet non-existent end-users sitting at their computers. The T3 copper links were built to carry voice traffic, not data, so in order to carry the new NSFNET traffic, they had to lay down either more copper or more fiber. The telcos built that capacity, the govt paid for access to it. The government didn't put down a single solitary twisted pair anywhere.

It was only because the govt was forced (by legislators) to allow commercialization of the nascent internet that we have the actual internet that we know and have used since around 1993/1994.

The first ISP I worked for started in 1994 with a 'mom and pop ISP', that we built from an initial Frame Relay connection from Pacific Bell, and gradually kept buying more of them, and more of them, then T3's, then routers at exchanges, all to be able to meet the insane demand from consumers and businesses who wanted connectivity AFTER the govt let go its stranglehold on internet traffic. It was a constant battle to keep up with the amount of traffic we carried. Many times we had to wait for PacBell to build more capacity in their network before we could offer more capacity to our customers because demand far exceeded existing capacity.

Your strawman aside, Nobody is saying that running the Internet Utilities would be free... and that is your whole backwards argument. Your argument simply doesn't work. No Utilities are free. YOu must pay.

You made many claims and arguments, and I responded to them. So the claim that my counter-argument to just one of your claims - that "any City can do this [offer internet] for nearly free" - is my "whole argument" is disingenuous.

Internet as a Utility:
Those who use moAr of the internet and thus use more heat, use more microswitches, use more data and "moAr" bandwidth... pay more!

And that's what we have, now. Are you claiming your ISP charges you more to visit Netflix, or some other content? Please, do share the details. Or are you claiming that some other ISP - not your own - does this? Please, do share the details. I eagerly wait to learn of this content-based-pricing that people are subjected to.

Additionally, States that Tax individuals & companies based on certain usage, have local issues. Though it is illegal to sell a product to you at a different cost to me, based on what I want to use it for. That is discrimination.

Again - which ISP's are doing this? What States are doing this?

Everyone paying the same price while a family of 12 down the street use all the bandwidth in the neighborhood is just Socialism..

Back to political philosophy 101 for you.

Internet as a Utility means you pay for what you use... If you want priority packets then ISPs can compete for that business.

So you pay based on what websites you visit? Not based on your bandwidth and monthly usage?

I ran one of the most trafficked fido-net servers in the world... back in the day. It cost at lot of personal money before the government grants stepped in.

Do tell. Please let us know what specific government grants you received to run your BBS network.

(Hint: the costs for running fido dropped dramatically after the government stopped limiting internet access to only non-commercial activity, not because of any government grants. People running BBS's no longer needed multiple voice lines to carry multiple users along with their fidonet traffic. If I'm wrong you should easily be able to point me to these grants.)

 

[bclaymiles]

More than 20% of the cost of running an ISP is in illegally tracking and datamining and maintaining customers data, not in providing Internet service.

Source?