House bill seeks to make cable TV market more competitive

[Phlegm]

Good news for the Comcast haters. From Associated Press:

(AP) Monopolies in many cable TV markets could end under House-passed legislation that supporters said would increase competition and drive down prices.

The far-reaching telecommunications legislation, passed 321-101 Thursday night, would encourage telephone companies and others to enter video markets by scrapping the time-consuming system where prospective providers must negotiate individually with every locality.

"This legislation can increase competition not only for cable services, but also unleash a race for who can supply the fastest, most sophisticated broadband connections that will provide video, voice and data services," said House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Joe Barton, R-Texas.

Barton noted that because of the impediments created by the local franchising system, the United States doesn't even rank in the top 10 worldwide in broadband deployment. "This bill should change that statistic," he said.

The issue now moves to the Senate, where the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee is to vote on its version of the bill later this month.

"We urge Senate to act soon because every year reform is delayed costs Americans more than $8 billion in their cable bills," said Peter Davidson, Verizon senior vice president for federal government relations.

While there was wide agreement on the principle of increasing competition, the House was divided over the issue of "net neutrality," or how to ensure that telephone, cable and other Internet providers don't discriminate against competitors or users by limiting access or charging higher fees.

The Barton bill gives the Federal Communications Commission authority to enforce net neutrality principles and set fines of up to $500,000 for violations.

Many Democrats, backed by a diverse lobby of content providers such as Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp., and users ranging from religious broadcasters to liberal bloggers, said this wasn't enough to maintain the Internet's freewheeling openness.

Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., offered an amendment stating that broadband network providers must not discriminate against or interfere with users' ability to access or offer lawful content. Opponents argued that it would create government regulations controlling the Internet and make it more difficult for service providers to invest in new high-speed technology. It was defeated 269-152.

"Tilting the cost burden onto end users, which would be the inevitable result of neutrality regulations, will only delay much-needed broadband deployment," said Mike McCurry, co-chair of Hands off the Internet, a coalition of telephone, business and small government groups.

The White House said in a statement that it supported the bill and its language on video franchising. But on net neutrality, the administration said the FCC has the power to address potential abuses.

"Creating a new legislative framework for regulation in this area is premature," the statement said.

Democratic opponents also said the measure did too little to ensure that broadband services would be extended to lower income and rural areas.

Markey predicted that telephone companies would open services in wealthy communities, providing competition for services and lower prices but that it would ignore poorer areas that would be stuck with high prices.

Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., a black lawmaker from Chicago's South Side and a co-sponsor of the legislation, disputed that. "I'm from the other side of town," he said. "This is a bill that will make a difference in the lives of the people on the other side of town."

"This bill is about cable rates and what we know today is that cable rates are too high in America," said Rep. Albert Wynn, D-Md., another member of the Congressional Black Caucus.

Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich, who heads the telecommunications subcommittee, estimated that people could save $30 to $40 each month if given a choice in video services.

[Arlos]

Fuck. I thought the net neutrality stuff was going to make it. Grrr. Hopefully the Senate'll do something.

-Arlos

[Eziekial]

Great. We all need more regulation in our lives.

[Arlos]

You mean legislation that's equivalent to anti-monopoly legislation?

Legislation to prevent ISPs from giving internal divisions unfair competitive advantage over external companies, making it harder for new businesses to gain market share?

Legislation that would prevent ISPs from filtering websites because they disagree with the message?

Oh yeah, no one needs legislation like that, nope, not at all.

Get a fucking clue.

We NEED Net Neutrality legislation, period.

-Arlos

[Eziekial]

Start your own ISP you clueless moron. You think monopolies are part of a free market? Do you have any idea about economics or are you just spouting stupidity for the fun of it?

[Arlos]

Gosh, there's no reason we have anti-monopoly legislation, huh?

Companies didn't form monopolies back in the laisez-faire days before such laws were instituted, huh?

Go look up Standard Oil sometime, and look into WHY those laws were added.


The Internet is a unique resource. Allowing individual business to determine their own traffic levels and their own filtering will end up turning it into something much more akin to Cable TV: They give you a list of what you can watch, and you get to select from their list, rather than the modern internet, where you get to pick what you want to see, when youw ant to see it, and there's no controls or artificial barriers.

-Arlos

[Eziekial]

The reasoning behind anti-monopoly legislation is flawed. It's based on poor economics and reasoning. A monopoly in and of itself is not evil or bad as long as it's not coersed.

Standard oil was already losing market share by the time the anti-trust lawsuits were brought against it, so what is your point there? Are you saying that you believe anti-trust laws stop monopolies and somehow create competition like some magical business fairy? How many choices do you have in cable tv, electricity or sewage in your area? Where are your choices there? Who created the artifical barriers to those lines of business?

I'm actually at a lose for words. I'm baffled, not by your ignorance on economics (it's not a very exciting line of study) but your fervor in defence of something you really don't understand. What did you read that provided you with the basis of your position for this net neutrality law? Perhaps from that I can better understand your position.

[Tikker]

unless you work in the industry, you have almost no idea what the net neutrality fight is actually about.

[Arlos]

Last I checked, I at least used to work in the industry.

-Arlos

[Tikker]

Last I checked, I at least used to work in the industry.

-Arlos

when did you work at an ISP? and if it was more than 5 years ago, it doesn't count

[Arlos]

I worked for Mindspring for a while, before they got bought out by Earthlink. Though, it was indeed 6 years ago now.

-Arlos

[Tikker]

I worked for Mindspring for a while, before they got bought out by Earthlink. Though, it was indeed 6 years ago now.

-Arlos

correct me if I'm wrong, but they were/are just a 3rd party ISP no?

ie, their service sat on top of someone else's network for the last mile?

[Arlos]

Depended on the location. Some spots they owned it, other spots they leased space. Here in the bay area, they went through what was originally Netcom back in the stone age of the internet. Out in Atlanta where they were based, they owned a lot of it.

My responsibilities were countrywide though, so I had to deal with all varieties of issues.

I still remember when they added a new guy to my group, who was basically brand new to network engineering (wasn't even qualified for a CCNA yet), and someone mistakenly gave him the top level password for the backbone ciscos. He went in to do something he shouldn't have been doing, and managed to completely kill the central backbone router for Atlanta. Don't remember exactly what he did, but to fix it actually required someone to go sit in front of it and hook up to the console port. As I recall, the tech support department was rather busy for a bit there from calls from people in Atlanta. Ultimately, he didn't even get in that much trouble, cause he didn't even know enough to know he shouldn't have been playing with what he did. THe guy who caught major shit was the one who gave him the password.

-Arlos

[Eziekial]

Fascinating.

[Yamori]

unless you work in the industry, you have almost no idea what the net neutrality fight is actually about.

Mind expounding on that a bit? I'd be very curious to hear the ISP side of the story on that. It doesn't seem to be mentioned anywhere, from what I've read on it at least.