Darth Rotor
Salted Sith Cynic
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I have none. It has become such, on its own, and even intentionally.
Obama ruins the internet
- Thread starter Upchurch
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I have none. It has become such, on its own, and even intentionally.
Francesca R
Girl
In the UK, British Telecommunications Group plc ("BT") (formerly The Post Office) built the lines when it was a state-owned enterprise. BT was fully privatised before internet in 1984 and thus local exchange networks were fully privately owned (sold by the government to shareholders of BT). What happened with the advent of the net was that the regulator (OFCOM) required BT to spin off the ownership of the local wires to another entity ("Openreach") which remains wholly owned by BT, and impose on it utility-like service requirements including open access to any ISP (including BT which is one).
Thus--(1) it was not public infrastructure at the time and (2) no eminent domain / compulsory purchase and no appropriation took place. However difficult it may be for things in the US to change, it is a red herring to introduce eminent domain and/or "seizing assets" as obstacles to this.
If the US can (via the FCC) regulate ISPs as utilities (telling them what to do in the realm of being indifferent to content providers--which is exactly what the proponents of NN want to happen), then that is not particularly different from imposing, instead, such common-carriage designation on the local exchange network infrastructure. Which is less intrusive, and has the (unambigously positive) effect of encouraging ISP competition.
Indeed I have. You raise objections that I have covered despite your claims to have read the thread. I have nine choices of ISP at my address (BT, The post office, Plusnet, Fuel, John Lewis, Sky, Virgin, EE and TalkTalk). I have one telephone wire connection. And this is somehow impossible?
Back to you: Just entertain for a minute the possibility that you are wrong, and assume that this type of arrangement can be implemented in the US. Which is better? Would you still prefer monopolistic ISPs with a regulation that requires non-discrimination layered on top? If so why?
Upchurch
Papa Funkosophy
And in previous threads. Fancesca is hellbent on derailing any practical conversation about the topic.
Nihilianth
Illuminator
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I am trying to understand what you are saying here. So excuse me if you have to repeat yourself a couple of times. And please excuse the wall of text to follow. This is a bit of a complicated debate, as I think that both sides are talking past one another, without addressing what is being argued.
From what I understand, this is what happened in UK
:
Government built the infrastructure with one of its departments: The Post Office
The Post Office then became privates, and changed its name to British Telecommunications (BT). Or rather, it was a spinoff. (I assume the British Post Office is still a "thing." They just don't own the infrastructure they built, as they sold it off to a new private business.)
My question is, how this occurred. Here in the states, the government has never operated corporations, nor has it ever sold a department to be formed into a private corporation. Perhaps the closest we have is the Post Office as well. But it was never sold off to private investors. Nor has it ever been spun off to form a new industry to be controlled by a private business. I don't even think that would even be legal here in the States. Obviously, the UK has different laws, and government-run corporations are a tradition dating back centuries.
So BT used to be the Post Office, which was owned by the government, then became privatized. What was the basis for this occurring? I am sure there had to be certain rules in place, and shareholders would have to agree to whatever terms are placed on the newly privatized BT. From what I understand from this thread, BT broke whatever agreements they had with the government, and therefore, faced the consequences according to their agreement.
Then the internet comes along, and I suppose BT decided to become an ISP and actually providing internet service. However, the British government decided to declare it a utility instead, much like phone service, since it is a form of communication. Sounds to me like this is the agreement that they broke with the government: They were probably only to own the lines themselves, and to never provide any services to begin with.
So instead of allowing an ISP to also own the lines directly, the government decided to force a break in the company: Openreach will own the lines, and BT will own the service. But BT is the parent company of both businesses. Obviously, since BT is the parent company of both businesses, they essentially still own the lines and the ISP. However, Openreach MUST allow any ISP to be able to utilize, not just BT. And they cannot discriminate in favor of BT, since it is a utility and to be "open to anyone." I hope I got that correct, and please correct me if I am wrong. I do recognize this is not "Network neutrality." This is just allowing competition, which helps to decrease the needs for net neutrality laws.
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Going back a bit. When the internet really hit the public, the UK immediately declared it to be a utility. The US did not. Here in the States, the ISPs are the ones that invested their own monies into the infrastructure. There was no agreement with the government, as the US Postal Service (USPS) did not build the lines that then became privatized. This is a very important point. What, exactly, were the terms of the Post Office being sold off to private investors to form British Telecommunications? What were the agreements when the internet came along, and was declared a utility by the government?
Because as I said, the private businesses built the infrastructure. There was no spinoff from a government agency. Therefore, there were no terms of agreement between the government and the new private investors. With no such agreement (whatever it may have been,) there is no legal right for the government to just confiscate the equipment, or to break up the ISPs into different businesses.
To complicate matters, the ISPs, most significantly Comcast, has signed contracts with many-a-local government, allowing them to operate as monopolies. (or duopolies with the likes of DSL.) So I am not entirely sure that anti-trust lawsuits would even be valid. That would be the only hope of breaking the monopolies and allowing more competition: Anti-trust suits at the federal level. Like what happened to Microsoft in the 90s. But Microsoft did not have signed contracts with government entities, allowing them operate as a monopoly.
Therefore, because they have signed contracts with local governments to allow them to operate as local or regional monopolies....and because they own all the equipment as well as the service....forcing "competition" became virtually impossible. The only solution left then, is NN! There has got to be guidelines put in place in order to avoid abuse of monopolies potentially discriminating against certain content they happen to want to discriminate against, even though they are collecting hard-earned money from their customers to be providing any content at an agreed-upon speed and price.
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Red Baron Farms
Philosopher
That's fair since Gore invented the internet.
Francesca R
Girl
It was a privatisation of which the British government has undertaken very many. The first high profile one was BP (British Petroleum) in the 1970s. Typically when a formerly state owned corporation is privatised the government grants it some kind of a renewable licence containing terms of operating service.
That is correct, except for firms like Fannie Mae and Sallie Mae. However, the US still regulates private firms categorized as utilities and lays service requirements on them. Indeed, this is just what NN proponents want the FCC to do with ISPs. My view is that it is not beyond the reach of America to do this with the local loop infrastructure that is owned by telecom firms instead. In fact there was an endeavour to do local loop unbundling in the US in the 1990s but it basically failed. OK so that suggests there is/was a battle involved. But so is there in respect of NN. It is not apparent that one avenue of approach is harder than the other. Perhaps because there is a legacy, local loop unbundling proper is genuinely a no go area for regulators, ever. If that is the case, then a next best approach is appropriate.
It has taken a long time but some members here have at least arrived at that point (the conclusion that open local exchange networks are a better solution, they are just pragmatically less likely). For a long time there was just misunderstanding and scraping the barrel for any objection to this idea (with the assorted red herrings raised)
Whenever the government of the day wants to privatise something it has to pass a bill through both houses of parliament. But this is fairly routine since the government always has a majority, supermajorities are never needed, the upper house exceedingly rarely votes something down and even if they do they can be circumvented, and the Queen does not veto anything because that is completely a perfunctory step. Passing legislation in the US involves higher hurdles, I know.
The Thatcher government 1979-1990 privatised very many companies. It was fully in line with their ideology. Subsequent Blair administrations did it just as much though. Today there is very little left in state control, ex a few banks bailed out in the crisis of 2008-9.
I am not aware of that. I believe that comment applies to a similar situation in New Zealand.
An act of parliament ended BT's monopoly in providing phone service when it was floated in 1984, but did not require it to share its lines. Local loop unbundling was not required of it until 2000. As far as I know this doesn't require parliament to get involved, it was just made a stipulation of BTs ongoing licence. Regulators have various powers to make rules with legally binding force. (Like the FCC does)
Effectively, yes--though it was local copper wires that were made utility-like, not internet service providers, which are still not required to be neutral. Most of them are (and they have to declare their policy) . . . because that is what a lot of people want. But several have varying flavours of traffic management. To be honest I think most of the non-neutral offerings that have evolved are on mobile networks, and these are cheaper because they restrict content by type (which in turn means they get some of their revenue from the providers of content they allow).
Thank you for that. I don't claim to be an expert on US telecom regulation. I know that certain things in the realm of breakups and service requirements have been either legislated (telecom act 1996) or decided by court (AT&T-BabyBells). I also know that some legally binding agreements exist that stitch-up future regulation. If, then, it is really true that "The only solution left then, is NN!", then that is suboptimal, but understandable. I have already noted that if I was in the US I would probably support NN if I thought that was the case. That has been the discussion I think should be had though, and that's been my participation in these threads
By the way--despite having a pretty good competition set up for ISPs, the European Union is also moving towards neutrality laws. The EU parliament voted in favour of such a proposal this year. However these things don't become law unless the council of ministers (basically the 28 heads of government) also agree and that is where a lot of EU legislation dies. I am of the view that such laws would be a negative step in the EU.
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quadraginta
Becoming Beth
How did we reconcile this when Bell was divested?
Prior to that not only were the lines limited to use only by Bell and its subsidiaries, but even the devices attached to those lines had to be rented from Ma Bell. There were no alternative phones or answering machines, because Bell wouldn't allow them to be hooked up to "their" lines.
Somehow we managed to overcome the ownership issues then. How is the cable infrastructure fundamentally different?
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Nihilianth
Illuminator
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Ok, very good. That was my understanding of the matter. Just wanted to have that part cleared away. US laws are different. The US government, constitutionally, cannot own any corporation. The closest we came, was in 2008 for the car industry bailout, where the government essentially bought up a lot of stock, but turned around and resold it for a loss to investors who did not want to take the risk of buying stock that was too expensive. But I digress.
I was actually thinking along the lines of the India Trade Company of several centuries back. Not a big historian, and too lazy to look it up. But I know the UK has a long-standing tradition of state-owned corporations.
That's a good point. Fanny Mae and Sally Mae are a strange exception. I never really understood those organizations. So I suppose you could add that to the list of state-controlled corporations to the car industry for a few months. I grant you that.
Personally, I do prefer the unbundling method. You have convinced me of that much. There is still one other matter I have not touched on: That of potential collusion within the ISP industry. Some sort of industry-wide agreement or "tradition" to allow throttling of websites to happen. Maybe I am just paranoid though. I certainly do not trust corporations to ever do anything in the best interest of the consumer, unless it profits them to do so.
Strange. I always thought the PM had the power of the veto, not the Queen. Perhaps they both do.
American politics is very messy. I think only Italy tops the US in political messiness. It is why even simple immigration reform has been virtually impossible for the past 3 decades. It was nearly 20 years since the last health care reform act failed (1993 under Clinton,) before a new bill even came to the floor. And boy, was THAT messy. It is also why many Americans distrust our government. And why so many Americans on here do not believe that forcing "more competition" through unbundling would be easier than passing NN. I do prefer unbundling at this point, but with the state of things in Washington, it is definitely not going to happen during this Congressional Session. It would have to take two years, a new president and a new Congress, for the White House to even be able to conceive of how to go about doing it. I see NN as a stop-gap measure that might have some support among a few of the Republicans.
Were there any agreements, or restrictions, on any of those newly privatized corporations? What I mean is, In order for investors to invest in BT for example, was there an agreement they had to abide by that BT would only own the infrastructure and not operate services? Or rather, was there an agreement that BT (Openreach now) would have to provide access to said infrastructure to any start-up communications companies that wanted to use those lines? I sort of half suspect so.
Yeah. This was what was confusing me I guess. I know people were switching back and forth between talking about NZ and the UK. So lets focus on the UK, considering our political environment and traditions are much more closely related to the UK than to NZ. That, and I assume your from the UK, so you probably know more about the system than you do about NZ. I know I know a lot more about the UK than NZ.
I suppose I could have looked all of this up. But like I said. I'm lazy.
That, and I wanted to see how much you knew. Seems as though you are more knowledgeable about it than I. (Or else, you cheated and looked it up!
)A similar thing happened in the US, as you already know. But it failed here for whatever reason. America is far more conservative than the UK, especially in recent years. Now the problem is, the internet and how it is run is deeply entrenched. And we have the ultra-conservative Tea Party to deal with. Congress is only interested in destroying the president, rather than govern a nation. And the president is a lame duck, so the only powers he has left to him, are executive orders. This has caused Congress to become so hell-bent on destroying him, that they keep bringing up impeachment and lawsuits against him every hour, on the hour. Breaking up of regional monopolies is considered "REALLY REALLY anti-business," and is virtually impossible right now and in the foreseeable future. Whereas, NN is only simply considered "anti-business." And the president can at least attempt another executive order after the immigration thing begins to clear away. Hopefully. So that, at least, is something.
That makes sense. I suppose if you want to go cheaper, you can expect "crappier" service. Meaning, less neutrality, because the traffic is much more tightly controlled in order to keep the infrastructure as limited as possible. Hence: Cheaper. Both for the business, and for the consumer. If the consumer wants neutrality and very little restrictions on service, they pay a little more because the infrastructure will necessarily have to be larger and more complex. The more I think this through, the more I like it. And the more I hate our Teapublican Congress.
Yes. That is correct. There was the telecom act of '96, and the anti-trust suit against ATT and Bell. The 90s had the advantage of a more liberal atmosphere. And I may be mistaken, but I do not believe that AT&T had agreements in place with so many local and regional governments to set up infrastructure owned and operated by them alone, in order to harvest as many customers as possible while reducing the risk to their investments; with the exchange of providing modern communications to more rural areas. In other words, ATT in the 90s is not Comcast in the 2000s....
I am interested to see if it passes in the EU. And if it does, what the effects will be. It would certainly be ammunition to help end the far-right conservative revival of the Biblically-obsessed.
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Nihilianth
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I wouldn't necessarily say that the "cable infrastructure" situation is "fundamentally different." I would rather say that our political atmosphere is WAY different. In the 90s, we didn't have this strange Christian Bible/conservative revival in the form of the so-called "Tea Party." I mean, hell, nobody can even so much as suggest raising taxes on the top 1% of earners by one percentage point, without being lambasted as a "COMMUNIST!" LOL. Not sure how anyone can ever reasonably expect to attempt break up a billion-dollar business in the name of "more competition." As great as it sounds, it just is not politically possible right now. People actually need to get out and vote for a change, then maybe we might have a better functioning government. (40% of eligible voters actually voted this past election. UGH!)
That, and the anti-trust suit against Bell/ATT was literally decades in the making. Anti-trust suits are not something that happens overnight. I, for one, would not be sad to see Comcast similarly broken up. We have to wait at least two years before we can even begin that conversation. In the meantime, there is nothing stopping them from doing what they want.
That, and I am not entirely sure just how much the Bell thing of the 90s parallels Comcast in the 2010s. Especially considering that Comcast is not exactly the only player in the ISP market at a national level. Whereas, Bell pretty much was. I also do not know how extensively Bell had signed contracts with local and regional governments, allowing local and regional monopolies like Comcast does. I didn't follow those things that closely in the 90s. I was only a kid. I know of the power of google, but frankly, I'm not really up for that sort of research ATM.
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Francesca R
Girl
So do (did--it's more tradition than today, virtually everywhere) most countries. So does the US really, it just likes to pretend it doesn't. Probably because it thinks that that is socialism and that America doesn't do socialism. So everything has to be nominally private, and then the rules get tied up in knots.
Bear in mind that if the US keeps monopolistic internet firms, and then regulates those as public utilities, it will end up considerably more regulated and restricted in the domain of net service than other countries that it does not want to look like. So something isn't quite right in the land of the free there.
Yay.
No the PM doesn't. In principle parliament is supreme and its will can't be thwarted by anyone. The monarch doesn't really (a royal veto would cause an existential crisis) but there remains a formality called Royal Assent which is the ceremonial equivalent of signing into law.
Sometime in 2009 (pre ACA) when the Dems had both houses and POTUS I started a thread asking why they couldn't get anything done. General response was that even those conditions are not conducive enough to much and that this was either (i) great (ii) the fault of the left (iii) the fault of the right.
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=156303
(actually I am from NZ but lived there 8 years compared to 32 in UK so my knowledge is not balanced)
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Newtons Bit
Penultimate Amazing
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Possibly. The states could also tell the ISPs that they are either a utility, and get regulated as such; or they are not a utility, and thus don't have any rights to easements.
They'll change their tune when they realize they will have to negotiate with every single property owner that their infrastructure runs through.
Nihilianth
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LUL!! SOCIALISM!!!
I swear, far too many Americans are far too uneducated. My god, so many do not understand that the simple fact that we do not have pure laissez faire capitalism, that inherently makes the US a "socialist" society. Though, to the credit of those Tea-Baggers who do understand, they actually argue in favor of one!
Some of the Dems in Congress at the time were weak. They are too afraid of their image to want to upset the conservative tide that was washing over the nation at the time. The first post in that thread, I think, hit the nail on the head: A lot of them were from traditionally conservative areas, and so either did not want to rock the boat within their constituency, or else they were conservative Democrats. Anytime I hear Faux Snooze or another Tea-Party conservative shout about "all those liberals!!" I have the distinct urge to want to abuse my forehead.
Really, I do not think that eminent domain is a feasible option at this point, politically. I talked somewhat at length about that.
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You don't have free markets when this system was initially started as a monopolies. There are still many cities and regions that only allow one cable carrier. This is a bit analogous to AT&T pre-breakup.
Complaining that the natural forces of the free market didn't solve the problem is similar to the issue w/ medical costs - government has been heavily interfering in these markets for decades so competition cannot obtain.
While you're at it - look up the huge political contributions from cable carriers - it strongly suggests crony capitalism (government making markets unfair for bribes) at work.
Now they want to add more regulations to hobble the markets and exact political tribute from the companies. Sheesh!
==
The primary problem is not that company A can pay company B for higher bandwidth, since they don't guarantee any level of service for end-users. It's that the carriers-monopolies have no motivation to listen to customers - so US bandwidth is shamefully slow.
You're arguing over the split of the pie, instead of addressing the insufficient supply of pie.
Upchurch
Papa Funkosophy
Just to catch up a bit on what's been going on on this topic:
Title II for Internet providers is all but confirmed by FCC chairman
Also, FCC to define broadband as minimum 25Mbps
Title II for Internet providers is all but confirmed by FCC chairman
Also, FCC to define broadband as minimum 25Mbps
quadraginta
Becoming Beth
Interesting. I pay $10.00 a month extra to Time Warner for their "Turbo Plan", which supposedly gets my service up to 20Mbp/s. A promise they frequently (usually?) fail at.
I'd love to see them held to a 25Mbp/s minimum.
Nihilianth
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I don't think that's what marplots meants.
I read marplot's last post as saying that you cannot call it "broadband," unless it is at minimum 25 mb/s. I don't think they would be forced to up your connection speed to 25, if you are contracted at 20.
Also, the new NN regulation by the FCC only seems to target "broadband." (Meaning, at least 25 mb/s connection speed.)
On the one hand, I am ok with that, as people who d/l a lot at under 25 mb/s (non-broadband connection,) can easily place a burden on the network. On the other hand, I am still of the opinion that a person should be able to do with their connection as they wish without being throttled back.
From a technical standpoint, I would opt with what Marplots has posted: NN targets 25 mb/s minimum. That seems reasonable I think.
Upchurch
Papa Funkosophy
You can pay for X connection speed, but you shouldn't expect to be able to actually use it?
Nihilianth
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Tony Stark
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Am I the only person here who gets speeds close to or even exceeding what their ISP (Time Warner Cable) promises? This isn't meant to be an argument against net neutrality, which I agree with, just curious.