Comcast: We Must Kill Net Neutrality To Help The Sick And Disabled
from the you-do-realize-nobody-believes-anything-you-say,-right? dept
For years now, large ISPs like Comcast have tried to have it both ways on net neutrality. They consistently profess to support the concept of net neutrality, but they don't want any meaningful rules actually holding them to their word on the subject. And if there are rules, they want them to be so loophole-filled as to be utterly useless. That's effectively what the FCC's initial 2010 rules did, and that's why companies like Comcast are now pushing to have the tougher 2015 rules killed and replaced with a new net neutrality law they know either won't happen, or will be quite literally written by the industry itself.
This have your cake and eat it too approach continued in this week's Comcast comment on the FCC's proceeding to kill net neutrality. In it, Comcast again pats itself on its back for the company's non-existent dedication to net neutrality, uses industry-paid economists to falsely claim net neutrality rules hurt broadband investment, and trots out all manner of flimsy justifications for the kind of feeble rules that look meaningful to the nation's nitwits, but allow Comcast the leeway to act anti-competitively whenever it likes.
One long-standing ploy used by giant ISPs to scare people into compliance is to argue that net neutrality rules will somehow prevent ISPs from prioritizing medical network traffic. That point was most starkly made when Verizon tried to argue that net neutrality protections would hurt the deaf and disabled by preventing ISPs from being able to prioritize needed communications tools. That's never actually been a problem, and every set of rules we've had so far carves out obvious, glaring exceptions to these services. But that didn't stop Comcast from trotting out this bogeyman once again in its FCC filing (pdf):
"...the Commission also should bear in mind that a more flexible approach to prioritization may be warranted and may be beneficial to the public. For example, a telepresence service tailored for the hearing impaired requires high-definition video that is of sufficiently reliable quality to permit users “to perceive subtle hand and finger motions” in real time. And paid prioritization may have other compelling applications in telemedicine. Likewise, for autonomous vehicles that may require instantaneous data transmission, black letter prohibitions on paid prioritization may actually stifle innovation instead of encouraging it."
The goal here is to scare policy makers into "more flexible" rules (read: embedding all manner of loopholes into net neutrality protections) or we'll inadvertently hurt the disabled, disadvantage the sick, or kill the smart-driving car industry in the cradle. But again, this has never actually been a problem. The 2010 net neutrality rules had so many exceptions of this type as to make them utterly meaningless, letting ISPs do pretty much whatever they'd like provided they argued it was for the health and security of the network. The 2015 rules also include broad, tractor trailer sized exceptions for this kind of traffic.
What Comcast really wants is rules so "flexible" and broad they don't actually address any of the real hot-button subjects in the net neutrality debate. Like Comcast's decision to abuse the lack of broadband competition to impose arbitrary usage caps and overage fees. Or the way it exempts its own content from these unnecessary limits to put competing streaming providers at a notable disadvantage in this emerging market (aka zero rating).
So it's important to understand that when Comcast pens blog posts insisting it supports net neutrality, what it's really saying is it supports an absurdly-broad definition of net neutrality, which includes so many caveats and loopholes as to make said support utterly meaningless. That's again why you're currently seeing large ISPs argue that they want to do away with the strong 2015 rules (which more clearly differentiate anti-competitive behavior from justifiable paid prioritization), and replace it with a new, industry-written law that takes us back to the murky definitions seen in the FCC's since-discarded 2010 rules.
So once again with feeling: anybody that actually cares about net neutrality should support the simplest and easiest way to protect consumers, startups and small businesses moving forward: keep the existing rules intact.
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Filed Under: fast lanes, fcc, net neutrality, open internet, self-driving cars, telemedicine
Companies: comcast
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Anyone??
HOW ABOUT GROUPS that would LOVE to WRITE THEIR OWN RULES AND LAWS...
ANYONE WANT A HAND CHOPPED OFF, BECAUSE THEY BELIEVE 1 THING, and WE another??
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Re: Anyone??
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Re: Anyone??
~Everyone
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Re: Anyone??
Im sick and disabled..
And after paying rent, utilities, Food..and the Gas I need to get to the doctor..
You are the last thing on my List to pay..,
And I have not gotten a Raise in my SS in over 3 years..
I figured that paying $50-60 1 time to PUT UP AND ANTENNA, insted of watching your 300 channels(I only watch 20) and Paying Every month, more then $20..
Was CHEAP..with an average of 20-50 channels in a METRO AREA..ALL LOCAL telling me whats happening HERE..
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Robber Barons
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Re: Robber Barons
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Ironically...
That's the part they don't explain.
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Keeping the net neutral so they can access all of it at the same speed.
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This should stay as far away from congress as possible.
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it is their literal fucking job!
But it is also the job of the electorate to rid themselves of corrupt politicians. that does not happen because of party sycophants voting in "anything but those others guys" never realizing that it lowers the bench mark to your guy only needing to be 1% better than the other to win your ignorant affections.
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"Like it or not, it is Congress that should be deciding this issue..."
The same Congress whose members are beholden to massive campaign contributions from the very companies that need to be regulated to protect the public from them? Cool ideal bro.
"...as opposed to nameless and faceless bureaucrats."
Nameless and faceless? You cannot possibly be serious...
https://www.fcc.gov/about/leadership https://www.fcc.gov/about-fcc/finding-people-fcc htt ps://www.fcc.gov/about-fcc/organizational-charts-fcc
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You did it again!
Nice article, but... You used the one phrase that pushes my buttons: "You want to have your cake and eat it, too!"
Well duh! What good is having cake and not being able to eat it?!?! What kind of sick bastard hands you cake and then tells you "You can have this cake, but eating it is STRICTLY FORBIDDEN!" The whole point of having cake is to eat it.
No, the PROPER way to say what is INTENDED is "You want to eat your cake and have it, too!" That makes a LOT more sense. Once you've eaten the cake, it's gone and no amount of crying will allow you to have it afterwards.
People have this saying backwards, and I won't rest until people use it in the correct fashion! Given this rant, I feel this is mandatory:
http://xkcd.com/386/
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Re: You did it again!
If we're being pedantic, that's not true: if you've taken one bite, you've eaten the cake but probably still have cake.
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Re: You did it again!
Thanks a bunch - I just spent half a day on XKCD pressing the random button. I blame you entirely.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RidiculousProcrastinator
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So basically the ISP is saying that their product is a basic package that is not equipped to meet the modern demands of an internet connection and if you pay a little bit more they can fix it.
I like this monopolist logic.
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OMG
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Re: OMG
They also really don't like when people actually USE their connection that they pay for (like streaming HD video) - because it forces them to actually improve their infrastructure, which costs money they could instead be using to pad their bottom line and or lining politicians' pockets with.
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Those bill payments have to go somewhere, right?
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The Information Superhighway
Disingenuous.
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Re: The Information Superhighway
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"For example, a telepresence service tailored for the hearing impaired requires high-definition video that is of sufficiently reliable quality to permit users “to perceive subtle hand and finger motions” in real time."
That's a bandwidth issue far more than any prioritization issue. So how about they get on the damn ball with that. And when you paid for higher bandwidth, well, you have paid for priority already.
These people have always been full of crap, and this only reminds me of how cable ISPs used to overload their local loops and then whine about people using the service they paid for. (Only without any actual congestion problems anymore, which were only ever due to the bad practices of ISPs in the first place.)
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Not this again...
Traffic prioritization by type of content has nothing to do with NN.
NN is about WHO the traffic is from (or to) and not WHAT the traffic is.
In many companies it is used for things like making sure that conference calls with video streaming takes priority over any other video or audio streaming going on.
Yeah content prioritization is fundamental to how the internet works but in the NN aspect it is like comparing grapes with drapes; it rhymes but it is not even in the fruit category.
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On the Privacy side...
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Comcast Is Trying to Confuse Different levels of Networks.
Likewise, a frequency-switching network sits on top of a fiber/core network, with the same comments applying.
In the cases of lambda, cores, and fibers, what one purchases is an "Indefeasible Right of Use" The frequency, the core and/or the fiber, as the case may be, is reserved to one, and no one else is allowed to use it, even when it is idle. People with special high-reliability applications purchase Indefeasible Rights of Use, and run their own networks on top of them. That is pretty much what Comcast does with broadcast television.
Now, of course, since it takes something like a million users to even come close to saturating an optical fiber, there are practically very few limits on how many separate packet networks can be set up, running on their own reserved frequencies. There would be a certain additional cost in frequency-switches, or "multiplexers."
Facilities requiring specially high-reliability data are not in practice located at random over the landscape. For example, sheltered housing for medically-at-risk people is commonly located next door to a hospital, so the ambulance doesn't have too far to go. It isn't too expensive to run a dedicated optical fiber. There is always something much less portable than data which dictates location. For example, nuclear power plants are commonly located around the question of: how are you going to deliver a thousand-ton reactor vessel, say twenty feet in diameter? Or, where is there an electric power line mighty enough to carry away thousands of megawatts of electricity?
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