US Telecom beats up FCC over investment Telco lobbying group US Telecom has fired another broadside at their erstwhile friendly regulator, the Federal Communication Commission (FCC), saying the billions telcos make each month isn't enough. This time, in a blog post from its vice president of law and policy, Diane Holland, Big Telco is complaining that the FCC – and …
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I may be missing something, but why should it be illegal for smaller companies to deploy innovative application, which may be time & latency sensitive, to purchase guaranteed QoS with bandwidth hogging applications? Why should it be illegal for smaller providers to provide similar performance characteristics that larger providers with deep $$$ pockets can provide?
Many would rather reduce the cost in hospital bills and provide expert access in hospitals located in rural areas. Sure, robotic surgery could be set up using MPLS to these remote locations, but it is much cheaper to run internet, if the QoS could be guaranteed between the commands issued by the remote doctor and the robots, without a surge traffic from the Super Bowl killing the patient.
Why would non-time sensitive applications, like file transfers, be allowed to interfere with my trying to do video conferencing over my phone during peak usage times? I have friends in poorer urban settings where their time sensitive applications (VoIP) stink now, during peak times in their neighborhood.
Not all network providers, there are literally many hundreds of providers, offer the same bandwidth. In more rural areas, where there are fewer customers, the cost of infrastructure per income from user ratio is much higher. The regional network providers used to be able to prioritize protocols which were time/latency sensitive, so good user experience was still possible.
Some people, who deal with refugees & immigrants, don't appreciate "the war on poor" being perpetrated by the wealthy campaign donors, who have the ability to pay for their access. There are people with anti-immigration sentiment, who feel the poor & rural people deserve what they get. There are others who want to make the poor & rural angry, by using rules to reduce their quality of life, so they can be mobilized for political campaigns. Any way you cut it, these people are immoral, the true evil that needs to be fought.
For the poor, the FCC and the encouragement from the Administration has been an unmitigated disaster in the United States. There are people who think they know better, because they do not live with or know the poor... it affects people I know. It is sad, because the people negatively affected don't know any better.
Wow, you're so full of Republican talking points you can't even think straight. Does it hurt to not actually understand the topics you discuss this much? Or is ignorance that painless? I don't even know where to start correcting your misperceptions. It would take 5000 words, at least.
You really have no idea what the FCC regulations are, what's allowed and what's not, nor what the actual results of similar regulation have been in other countries. It's kinda scary.
"not actually understand the topics you discuss this much? Or is ignorance that painless?"
Attacking the person and not the argument is a logical fallacy, ad hominem. An admission of losing the argument.
"You really have no idea what the FCC regulations are, what's allowed and what's not"
Read the regulation by the American regulators. All traffic shaping was made illegal. All prioritization of traffic was made illegal. Do you understand the implications of the end of prioritization & traffic shaping on aspects of an internet when the network is under load???
Think: benefits of MPLS & ATM over Frame Relay & Leased Line. Video, Audio, and Interactive traffic. This is really basic stuff. I can't believe these political hacks did this, in the United States!
"It's kinda scary."
It is. The FCC's "net neutrality" means the end of facilitating latency sensitive traffic over The Internet. Investment for this type of traffic will now occur on parallel networks. With limited financial resources, where will investment $$$ be directed? Over public internet without latency protections or over private internet where SLA's can be charged for & guaranteed?
What a waste of resources. Net Neutrality is all about benefits for the privileged: wealthy and urban. It is about coercion. The rest can go to hell.
"Attacking the person and not the argument is a logical fallacy, ad hominem. An admission of losing the argument."
It is not an admission of losing the argument. It's an admission that the argument is so cracked it isn't even worth having. But since you insist...
"All traffic shaping was made illegal. All prioritization of traffic was made illegal"
No, it wasn't. You can discriminate based on class. You just can't discriminate within a class. You double especially cannot discriminate based on sender or reciever. And you can offer different types of connections with different commitments. Nothing bans MPLS, for example.
"The FCC's "net neutrality" means the end of facilitating latency sensitive traffic over The Internet"
No, it doesn't.
"With limited financial resources, where will investment $$$ be directed? Over public internet without latency protections or over private internet where SLA's can be charged for & guaranteed?"
Latency sensitive traffic will go over managed networks. Non-latency sensitive traffic over the internet. Same it has always been. Also, the single most rational way to manage network resources, especially given the global move to encrypting everything.
"Net Neutrality is all about benefits for the privileged: wealthy and urban."
Incorrect. Net Neutrality is all about ensuring that infrastructure providers who own content providers cannot prefer or provide priority access to their content over the content of others. Simple as that.
If an internet service provider wishes to offer an Internet connection where they explicitly state in their contract with the end user "we will prioritize all SIP VOIP traffic", they would get away with it. If they said - or worse, implemented without saying so - that they would prioritize all SIP VOIP traffic originating from or destined to the carrier's SIP VOIP service, but not others, the hammer would drop.
Of course, none of this is relevant. Most of the internet is encrypted these days. The rest will be soon. Discrimination based on traffic type is increasingly impossible, and net neutrality expressly forbids discrimination based on traffic origin or destination.
Unless, of course, the ISP wants to give control over prioritization to the user. Say, by honouring QoS tags or deploying SD-WAN technologies. If the user has control over their own prioritization then they can prioritize traffic between the user and the ISP. The FCC can't shit on that.
Where it gets murky is traffic prioritization after the first mile. There are actually a number of possible legal ways to enable latency sensitive traffic streams flagged by the user to be delivered via priority network channels, but they do, in fact, require additional investment and effort from the ISP side.
I'll not get bogged down in the details, but suffice it to say that fair traffic management is, in fact, possible under the FCC's network rules. Autocratic traffic management is not.
Similarly, nothing prevents the ISP from offering a hybrid WAN connection to the user. A reserved portion of bandwidth for latency-sensitive applications, delivered as a "separate connection", despite sharing a wire. There are so many ways to skin this cat that don't involve screwing the end user that I'm going to right back to my original statement here which is that you are dumb and have no idea what you're talking about.
And that the whole debate is pretty much pointless, and not worth having. So it's better, easier, and a little bit more fun to just throw poo at the individual. Time wasted on the pointless, I'm off to bed.
Holland highlights an FCC decision from a decade ago, when it forced incumbent local exchanges to open up their networks and allow competitors to use them.
Errrr.. yeah.. And where all those "incumbent local exchanges" now? I do believe they have been sucked up because they were successful.
This whole thing by the Telcos smacks of "our idea of competition is to be the only competitor". In drag racing that's a bye-run...
@Mark 85, that's exactly the point. Big business uses regulators to push small businesses out of their market. That's the 80+ year history of the regulatory state in the US, at least. And it's mind-boggling that some continue to call for more regulation to make sure that these big businesses stop getting so big. That's true in virtually every regulated industry in the US and I can't imagine that it's any different elsewhere (though I do well outside perspective to confirm/deny).
In the US, the various regulatory agencies (e.g. FCC) are the crony capitalist puppets of big businesses. This is a complete rehash of the same arguments against freeing markets that mercantilists and trade unions put forward in the 1700-1800s.
Q: "If Holland, as a mouthpiece, is so in favour of investment in real, actual facilties, then why such severe opposition to any municipality that wishes to make real investment in real infrastructures?"
A: "Because BIG TELCO CAN'T OWN IT!!!!!"
BIG TELCO (to its customers and politicians): WE OWN your ass!!!!
"The Occasional Stevie" and I (and maybe others) are:
In the U.S.
In the State of New York
in the Long Island region
in the county of Suffolk
BUT in two different townships - Him=Islip; Me=B(C)rookhaven
Less than 10 miles apart; as the crow/raven flies.
Stevie - has a choice of either CableVision/Optimum OR Verizon FIOS OR O.T.A.
ME - CableVision/Optimum OR Static (since 11 Sept)
B (C)rookhaven WILL not allow Verizon to install the "majestic cable of infinite freedom" [fiber] for some back-wood reason [cash in some political pocket], We even have a "Special" B(C)rookhaven cable T.V. line-up/channel listing..
The "best" of the competition is :
A) CableVision/Optimum over RG-59u (installed 20+ years ago)
OR
B) Verizon DSL over Unshielded Twisted Pair (installed when the /YOU Red Coats where on this over crowded sand bar*)
Sh!t or sh!tter - that the choice?!!
*) 1775 - when the reds took much of this sand bar, South of Old Country Road. [I can not quote the source(s) at the moment - MY Friday.]
I have to admit from a "market A" uk perspective, talking to friends in West Virginia and California, compoared to the situation there in many areas the much maligned BT Openreach (oft referred to by me as Openjoke) dont seem half so bad.
The UK situation isnt ideal but I think we have a better deal than many on the other side of the pond, especially when I hear how much they charge you guys for the seemingly underinvested services they run there
Apparently, they also forget promises (and contracts) to increase investment when they get what they want. So history tells us that what ever happens, the Telcos will do what they were planning to do.
Kind of like politicians: what comes out of their mouths has no relation to what will happen.
"Holland notes that competition is good but the FCC misunderstands what competition actually is in the telco world."
I think they know exactly what telco companies consider competition in the telco world is, and that would be a monopoly for entire areas. Its the same in the broadband world, and cable you have 1 of 2 companies to choose from who both don't compete for customers as they know you are screwed, and have to choose either one.
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