[governance] FW: [Dewayne-Net] The internet is fucked

[Suresh Ramasubramanian]

To use the language of the article, there is even more bullshit in it than the bullshit on the other side it seeks to call out.  

--srs (iPad)

> On 04-Mar-2014, at 22:59, "michael gurstein" <gurstein at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: dewayne-net at warpspeed.com [mailto:dewayne-net at warpspeed.com] On Behalf
> Of Dewayne Hendricks
> Sent: Tuesday, March 04, 2014 8:53 AM
> To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net
> Subject: [Dewayne-Net] The internet is fucked
> 
> [Note:  This item comes from friend Tim Pozar.  DLH]
> 
> From: Tim Pozar <pozar at lns.com>
> Subject: The internet is fucked
> Date: March 4, 2014 at 8:13:00 PST
> To: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne at warpspeed.com>
> 
> POLICY & LAW
> The internet is fucked
> By Nilay Patel
> Feb 25 2014
> <http://www.theverge.com/2014/2/25/5431382/the-internet-is-fucked>
> 
> Here’s a simple truth: the internet has radically changed the world. Over
> the course of the past 20 years, the idea of networking all the world’s
> computers has gone from a research science pipe dream to a necessary
> condition of economic and social development, from government and university
> labs to kitchen tables and city streets. We are all travelers now, desperate
> souls searching for a signal to connect us all. It is awesome.
> 
> And we’re fucking everything up.
> 
> Massive companies like AT&T and Comcast have spent the first two months of
> 2014 boldly announcing plans to close and control the internet through
> additional fees, pay-to-play schemes, and sheer brutal size — all while the
> legal rules designed to protect against these kinds of abuses were struck
> down in court for basically making too much sense. “Broadband providers
> represent a threat to internet openness,” concluded Judge David Tatel in
> Verizon’s case against the FCC’s Open Internet order, adding that the FCC
> had provided ample evidence of internet companies abusing their market power
> and had made “a rational connection between the facts found and the choices
> made.” Verizon argued strenuously, but had offered the court “no persuasive
> reason to question that judgement.”
> 
> Then Tatel cut the FCC off at the knees for making “a rather half-hearted
> argument” in support of its authority to properly police these threats and
> vacated the rules protecting the open internet, surprising observers on both
> sides of the industry and sending new FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler into a
> tailspin of empty promises seemingly designed to disappoint everyone.
> 
> “I expected the anti-blocking rule to be upheld,” National Cable and
> Telecommunications Association president and CEO Michael Powell told me
> after the ruling was issued. Powell was chairman of the FCC under George W.
> Bush; he issued the first no-blocking rules. “Judge Tatel basically said the
> Commission didn’t argue it properly.”
> 
> In the meantime, the companies that control the internet have continued down
> a dark path, free of any oversight or meaningful competition to check their
> behavior. In January, AT&T announced a new “sponsored data” plan that would
> dramatically alter the fierce one-click-away competition that’s thus far
> characterized the internet. Earlier this month, Comcast announced plans to
> merge with Time Warner Cable, creating an internet service behemoth that
> will serve 40 percent of Americans in 19 of the 20 biggest markets with
> virtually no rivals.
> 
> And after months of declining Netflix performance on Comcast’s network, the
> two companies announced a new “paid peering” arrangement on Sunday, which
> will see Netflix pay Comcast for better access to its customers, a
> capitulation Netflix has been trying to avoid for years. Paid peering
> arrangements are common among the network companies that connect the
> backbones of the internet, but consumer companies like Netflix have
> traditionally remained out of the fray — and since there’s no oversight or
> transparency into the terms of the deal, it’s impossible to know what kind
> of precedent it sets. Broadband industry insiders insist loudly that the
> deal is just business as usual, while outside observers are full of concerns
> about the loss of competition and the increasing power of consolidated
> network companies. Either way, it’s clear that Netflix has decided to take
> matters — and costs — into its own hands, instead of relying on rational
> policy to create an effective and fair marketplace.
> 
> In a perfect storm of corporate greed and broken government, the internet
> has gone from vibrant center of the new economy to burgeoning tool of
> economic control. Where America once had Rockefeller and Carnegie, it now
> has Comcast’s Brian Roberts, AT&T’s Randall Stephenson, and Verizon’s Lowell
> McAdam, robber barons for a new age of infrastructure monopoly built on
> fiber optics and kitty GIFs.
> 
> And the power of the new network-industrial complex is immense and
> unchecked, even by other giants: AT&T blocked Apple’s FaceTime and Google’s
> Hangouts video chat services for the preposterously silly reason that the
> apps were "preloaded" on each company’s phones instead of downloaded from an
> app store. Verizon and AT&T have each blocked the Google Wallet mobile
> payment system because they’re partners in the competing (and not very good)
> ISIS service. Comcast customers who stream video on their Xboxes using
> Microsoft’s services get charged against their data caps, but the Comcast
> service is tax-free.
> 
> We’re really, really fucking this up.
> 
> But we can fix it, I swear. We just have to start telling each other the
> truth. Not the doublespeak bullshit of regulators and lobbyists, but the
> actual truth. Once we have the truth, we have the power — the power to
> demand better not only from our government, but from the companies that
> serve us as well. "This is a political fight," says Craig Aaron, president
> of the advocacy group Free Press. "When the internet speaks with a unified
> voice politicians rip their hair out."
> 
> We can do it. Let’s start.
> 
> THE INTERNET IS A UTILITY, JUST LIKE WATER AND ELECTRICITY
> 
> Go ahead, say it out loud. The internet is a utility.
> 
> There, you’ve just skipped past a quarter century of regulatory corruption
> and lawsuits that still rage to this day and arrived directly at the obvious
> conclusion. Internet access isn’t a luxury or a choice if you live and
> participate in the modern economy, it’s a requirement. Have you ever been in
> an office when the internet goes down? It’s like recess. My friend Paul
> Miller lived without the internet for a year and I’m still not entirely sure
> he’s recovered from the experience. The internet isn’t an adjunct to real
> life; it’s not another place. You don’t do things "on the internet," you
> just do things. The network is interwoven into every moment of our lives,
> and we should treat it that way.
> 
> "COMMON CARRIER RULES ARE BASICALLY FREE SPEECH."
> Yet the corporations that control internet access insist that they’re
> providing specialized services that are somehow different than water, power,
> and telephones. They point to crazy bullshit you don’t want or need like
> free email addresses and web hosting solutions and goofy personalized search
> screens as evidence that they’re actually providing "information" services
> instead of the more highly regulated "telecommunications" services. "Common
> carrier rules are basically free speech," says the Free Press’ Aaron. "We
> have all these protections for what happens over landline phones that we’re
> not extending to data, even though all these people under 25 mostly
> communicate in data."
> 
> It’s time to just end these stupid legal word games and say what we all
> already know: internet access is a utility. A commodity that should get
> better and faster and cheaper over time. Anyone who says otherwise is lying
> for money.
> 
> THERE IS ZERO COMPETITION FOR INTERNET ACCESS
> 
> None. Zero. Nothing. It is a wasteland. You are standing in the desert and
> the only thing that grows is higher prices.
> 
> 70 percent of American households have but one or two choices for high-speed
> internet access: cable broadband from a cable provider or DSL from a
> telephone provider. And since DSL isn’t nearly as fast as cable, and the
> cable companies are aggressive in bundling TV and internet packages
> together, it’s really only one choice. And that means the level of
> innovation from these providers has almost completely stagnated, even as
> prices have gone up.
> 
> Why are cellphones so much cooler now than they were in 2000? Because Apple
> and Google and Samsung all had to fight it out and make better products in
> order to survive. They’re competing. Comcast hasn’t had to fight anything,
> at any time. It is fat and lazy and wants nothing more than to get fatter
> and lazier. That’s why Comcast is spending $45 billion on Time Warner Cable
> instead of integrating Netflix into its cable boxes and working with Apple
> and Google and Microsoft on the real next generation of TV: when you’re the
> only real choice in 19 of America’s 20 biggest markets, you get to move real
> slow and still make a lot of money. It's not clear Comcast even knows what
> real competition looks like.
> 
> "Unless the FCC thinks that there is a realistic chance that the deal will
> reverse two decades of rising prices, it should stop the merger," writes
> Columbia Law School professor Tim Wu. "Passing on savings has never been
> part of Comcast’s business model." Monopolies are nice like that.
> 
> Despite the innovation in phones, the same is true for mobile internet.
> There are only four major national carriers, most of whom run incompatible
> networks and all of which are stronger in various regions. If you hate your
> Sprint or Verizon service, switching to AT&T or T-Mobile is anything but
> simple and probably requires paying off a two-year contact of some kind.
> (Even T-Mobile, which is aggressively eliminating contracts for service,
> maintains a number of device payment plans that require a contract.) Chances
> are once you’ve chosen a wired broadband carrier and a wireless carrier that
> works well in your area, you’re stuck: there are few other places to go, and
> even if you have choices the high costs of switching mean you’re not very
> likely to leave at all.
> 
> (And if anyone tries to tell you that ultra-expensive mobile broadband is
> somehow competitive with wired service, ask that person to buy you a nice
> dinner and tell you the story of when they realized dignity had a price.
> You’re talking to a cable industry lobbyist; they can afford it.)
> 
> What happens in countries where there’s real competition? In the UK, where
> incumbent provider BT is required to allow competitors to use its wired
> broadband network, home internet service prices are as low as £2.50 a month,
> or just over $4. In South Korea, where wireless giants SK Telecom and LG
> Uplus are locked in a fierce technology battle, customers have access to the
> fastest mobile networks in the world — up to 300Mbps, compared to a
> theoretical max of 80Mbps on Verizon that’s actually more like 15 or 20mbps
> in the real world.
> 
> AMERICANS PAY MORE FOR SLOWER SPEEDS THAN ANYONE ELSE IN THE WORLD And
> Americans pay more for these slower wireless speeds than anyone else in the
> world: in Germany, where customers can freely switch between carriers by
> swapping SIM cards, T-Mobile customers pay just $1.18 per Mbps of speed. In
> the US, our mostly incompatible wireless networks lock customers in with
> expensive handsets they can’t take elsewhere, allowing AT&T and Verizon to
> charge around $4 per Mbps each and Sprint to clock in at an insane $7.50.
> 
> American politicians love to stand on the edges of important problems by
> insisting that the market will find a solution. And that’s mostly right; we
> don’t need the government meddling in places where smart companies can
> create their own answers. But you can’t depend on the market to do anything
> when the market doesn’t exist. "We can either have competition, which would
> solve a lot of these problems, or we can have regulation," says Aaron. "What
> Comcast is trying is to have neither." It’s insanity, and we keep lying to
> ourselves about it. It’s time to start thinking about ways to actually do
> something.
> 
> [snip]
> 
> Dewayne-Net RSS Feed: <http://dewaynenet.wordpress.com/feed/>
> 
> 
> 
> 
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