FCC to vote on new proposed net neutrality rules on February 26

Himanshu Arora

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FCC chairman Tom Wheeler has announced that the agency will vote on new proposed net neutrality rules next February 26. He made the announcement during a public interview at the ongoing CES event in Las Vegas.

Wheeler said the proposal will be circulated to the commissioners on February 5th, which means that they will have a three week window before the vote.

As far as the proposal is concerned, he didn't provide details, but did hint that it will reclassify broadband as a Title II utility. He also mentioned that the agency might take a hybrid approach, applying only relevant Title II restrictions to broadband Internet.

Last November President Barack Obama publicly came out in support of net neutrality, asking the regulator to reclassify Internet service as a utility. At that time Wheeler didn't officially say whether he would support the president's suggestion, although there were reports suggesting that he'd likely move in a different direction.

He touched upon the issue during the interview, saying, "When the president came out ... there was an effort made to say Wheeler and the president are pulling in opposite directions on this," adding, "But that wasn't exactly the reality because we're both pulling in the same directions, which is no blocking, no throttling of applications, and transparency about how we get there."

However, Wheeler was also quick to add that prioritization may be appropriate in some scenarios, for example, in case of an emergency health alert. "There are instances where priority makes a whole heck of a lot of sense," he said.

Opponents of net neutrality argue that prioritization of bandwidth is necessary for future innovation on the Internet, and greater regulation will negatively affect the investment in next-generation Internet infrastructure, something which would in turn stifle growth across the entire economy.

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I don't want to jump on the evil corporation, rubbing hands together looking evil, trying to make more money bandwagon that a lot of other people have. But its really hard not to think like that.
 
Wow ... in the 5 aforementioned comments we've pretty much covered it all! All I can add is that if they put this regulation along with the cable industry under the same regulation as existed with broadcast media under the FCC we might not be any better off, but we sure as heck would know who was doing what and when without so much of the smoke and mirrors!
 
I don't want to jump on the evil corporation, rubbing hands together looking evil, trying to make more money bandwagon that a lot of other people have. But its really hard not to think like that.

Look at this way, the corporations have their best interest in mind, and the govt has it's best interest in mind. Then ask yourself, which one of those best serves you?

If the net is regulated as a utility the govt can tax the ISPs in a whole bunch of new ways. Corporations however, don't pay any tax because it's always passed along to their customers and employees. This means rates will raise for internet access, which will cause people to cancel, downgrade, or change their service. It will also make the cable lines available to any ISP (instead of only who laid them), which means making new ones is rather pointless since the companies paying for them won't be able to recoup the costs. Neither of these things helps you at all.
The 'upside' is that all traffic will be equal, so when a Netflix comes out with a new show everyone wants to watch we'll be waiting in queue or watching degraded quality because Netflix traffic has to be given the same priority as every other website regardless of whether they have any traffic. Maybe this makes you feel good, but it doesn't have any real benefit for anyone. We are not going to have an internet where everything is slow except the services that pay extra for speed.

If the net is not regulated as utility then ISPs will charge companies like Netflix a fee to ensure faster service. Your netflix fee might go up, but you'll be able to watch what you want when you want it. The downside is the internet isn't 'equal' for everyone and some people will be able to complain about favors to big business etc.

The 2nd option is probably cheaper for you. Netflix has competition for your dollar where the cable companies don't so Netflix will be more reluctant to raise rates. And Netflix is $8, so raising it $2/month is a lot comparatively, while the ISP fee could easily be $5-$10.
 
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I have this feeling that whatever may happen, won't positively affect the people.

No, it won't. I always tell the net neuts that what they have in mind and what the regulators have in mind are two separate things. Regulation in no way will make the internet better because regulations that make the public utilities possible in no way have helped those industries.
 
No, it won't. I always tell the net neuts that what they have in mind and what the regulators have in mind are two separate things. Regulation in no way will make the internet better because regulations that make the public utilities possible in no way have helped those industries.

No kidding... if anyone is confused on this go read about the state of the electric grid in the US. It's old, falling apart, and extremely wasteful. the more you learn about how poor of shape it's in, the more you'll be surprised the lights stay on at all. The 2013 infrastructure report card (which probably isn't official at all for all I know) gave the power grid a D+.
(http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/a/#p/energy/overview)

Considering how less essential internet is than electricity, it would probably get even less attention.
 
This is insane, how many government takeovers do we need to see before the public starts throwing rotten fruit at every politician that suggests such a thing.

To "prioritize" packets, it is likely they will have to look at each packet... which gives them the power to shut down things like bittorrent, bitcoin or whatever else they don't APPROVE.
 
This is insane, how many government takeovers do we need to see before the public starts throwing rotten fruit at every politician that suggests such a thing.

To "prioritize" packets, it is likely they will have to look at each packet... which gives them the power to shut down things like bittorrent, bitcoin or whatever else they don't APPROVE.

Relevant article on the regulation of data: http://www.netcompetition.org/congr...roadband-for-google-entire-internet-ecosystem

But it's all good. Because equality.
 
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