[HN Gopher] Ajit Pai Is Officially Gone
___________________________________________________________________
Ajit Pai Is Officially Gone
Author : illuminated
Score : 80 points
Date : 2021-01-20 16:30 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.vice.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.vice.com)
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| People keep saying killing net neutrality was bad...but has there
| been actually been anything tangible that came out of killing it?
| aaomidi wrote:
| Most of HN wouldn't notice. https://www.naruc.org/nrri/nrri-
| activities/net-neutrality-tr...
| jjoonathan wrote:
| The long term plan is to raise rates on unfettered bandwidth
| and zero-rate first party streaming. Isn't that already
| happening in mobile?
|
| In any case, it's not a business plan they can enact tomorrow,
| they have to build out the services first and they would be
| wise to boil the frog in order to avoid legislative attention.
| postalrat wrote:
| I'm 99% certain centurylink is limiting bandwidth to
| youtube/twitch/netflix/etc in my area.
| fingerlocks wrote:
| There are QoS settings for streaming media on your CL
| provided router. If you changed routers or modified these
| settings you may be unintentionally de-prioritizing these
| services.
| wilde wrote:
| All of the ISPs merged with media companies, instituted data
| caps, and then exempted their in house media from the data
| caps.
|
| So yeah, fairly substantial.
|
| https://www.theverge.com/net-neutrality
| parineum wrote:
| > All of the ISPs merged with media companies, instituted
| data caps, and then exempted their in house media from the
| data caps.
|
| All of them? From your link, looks like it's ATT who did
| that.
|
| Cox, my ISP, instituted a data cap before the repeal.
| Furthermore, data caps have zero to do with net neutrality.
| Preferential billing and routing based on source or
| destination is certainly more possible with a data cap but
| data caps are net neutral by themselves. Data caps are cancer
| but they aren't going anywhere unless there's competition.
| Competition may also make net neutrality, as a political
| issue, obsolete.
|
| Net neutrality seems like a red herring to keep the telecom
| regulatory capture off the front page.
| kevincox wrote:
| The data cap isn't the issue. The issue is excluding some
| services (especially their own). This is basically a
| monopolization move.
| solarkraft wrote:
| Zero-rating is _not_ against european net neutrality
| regulations, by the way, but to be fair data caps are
| (mostly) only a thing for mobile connections here.
| brutal_chaos_ wrote:
| Yep, Comcast instituted a cap in my area. $10/1GB over, if I
| remember the "agreement I didn't sign" correctly.
|
| Edit to add: I've blown the cap in a 2 week period. It is
| ridiculous
| zaroth wrote:
| Well Netflix has to have been running at multiples of their
| regular bandwidth the last year, and at least anecdotally my
| experience has been flawless, and I haven't read about any
| widespread issues with Netflix streaming.
|
| It certainly seems the free market was able to deal with it.
|
| One thing I'm really happy with is how the FCC ran the $9.2
| billion auction for the RDOF (Rural Digital Opportunity Fund)
| subsidies. Although I don't have hard numbers, my impression is
| that the USF (Universal Service Fund) is a typical government
| boondoggle, and the RDOF auction format was a pretty innovative
| way to distribute the funds.
|
| For a minute there it looked like they would try to exclude
| SpaceX from bidding in the high bandwidth / low latency tier,
| but ultimately they went with taking a chance on their unproven
| tech and they were able to win $885 million in subsidies.
| aaomidi wrote:
| From your profile it seems like you live in MA right?
|
| https://www.ncsl.org/research/telecommunications-and-
| informa...
|
| Your state has net neutrality.
|
| https://www.naruc.org/nrri/nrri-activities/net-neutrality-
| tr...
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| Netflix has a wide distribution infrastructure, both in
| physical data centers and in cloud providers. Fast.com will
| usually give you sustained fast speeds even if your overall
| internet access is spotty. IIRC, some people were able to
| watch Netflix even when there were global internet outages.
| Their team is amazing.
| ulucs wrote:
| Chaos engineering really pays off
| ncmncm wrote:
| There is no free market in communication. "Was able to deal
| with it" is a curious turn of phrase: Yes, there are still
| companies. But has Americans' access to communication kept
| pace with the technology and with the rest of the world?
| _Very, very far_ from it. Americans, collectively, pay far
| more, for far fewer bits, than others in the world,
| particularly once you get just a few miles away from a city
| center.
|
| It is telling how much higher prices are in places where
| competition has been curtailed by the FCC's failures, and how
| much higher even prices where two services operate are, than
| in other countries. The number of states where towns have
| been forbidden to operate a municipal network also reveals
| our poor condition.
|
| America is a third-world country in communication, just as it
| is in infant mortality. It is not accidental. There are
| reasons that a cable service is the most hated company in the
| US, more even than Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland, or Koch
| Industries, which might deserve it more.
| AndrewUnmuted wrote:
| Those who were against killing net neutrality - on the grounds
| that it would grant corporations the power to censor our online
| experience - are now in favor of other corporations censoring
| our online experiences. So, that's a pretty terrible outcome
| that came from killing it - as bewildering and hard to explain
| as it may be.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| Here in Mexico, the biggest cellular company, Telcel, offers
| packages with "Unlimited Social Networks". Unlimited, in their
| language, means Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter don't count
| towards your data limit.
|
| This seemed like a good thing, but with the announce of
| WhatsApp sharing data with Facebook, many people have changed
| to Telegram or Signal. Some of them will return to WhatsApp
| because switching actually costs them money.
|
| Like USA, Mexico was unable to stop legislation against net
| neutrality. The erosion it's just starting.
| mmglr wrote:
| > His official FCC Twitter account, where he antagonized people
| who criticized him, has been deleted.
|
| Are gov't officials allowed to delete their official use Twitter
| (and any social media) accounts just like that? I would think
| posts should be archived or put in read only mode for posterity?
| ectqmbe wrote:
| Thought the same thing.
| lorax_108 wrote:
| ajit pai is gone and so is that fat orange liar trump!!! good day
| here in america!!!
| ectqmbe wrote:
| Yep. The news was almost boring. How great is that?
| illuminated wrote:
| I'm not the author of the list below, but it's a nice TLDR.
|
| Here is a list of harmful nonsense [1] Pai and his FCC did over
| the last four years:
|
| - Killed net neutrality
|
| - Approved T-Mobile / Sprint merger
|
| - Repeatedly released reports that claimed U.S. broadband is fine
|
| - Defended murder of net neutrality in court
|
| - Flubbed Puerto Rico hurricane disaster response
|
| - Slow-walked and obstructed investigation into telecom company
| sale of your location data
|
| - Said FTC would protect net neutrality (it didn't, and couldn't)
|
| - Falsely claimed killing net neutrality was good for broadband
| access (it wasn't)
|
| - Refused to brief Congress about telecom companies' sale of
| their customers' phone location data
|
| - Helped Comcast and other major telecom companies in their
| pursuit of monopolistic power
|
| - Oversaw America's falling rank in an annual "Internet Freedom"
| index
|
| - Allowed Verizon to throttle California firefighters' data while
| they were fighting unprecedented wildfires
|
| - Invented a DDoS attack that shut down the FCC's net neutrality
| comment system
|
| - Lied to public about that fake DDoS attack that shut down the
| agency's net neutrality comment system
|
| - Lied to Congress about that fake DDoS attack
|
| - Didn't detect that dead people were leaving comments on net
| neutrality comment system
|
| - Refused to change the definition of 'broadband'
|
| - Demanded $200 to release emails about his giant mug
|
| - Allowed scammers to submit fake comments about net neutrality
| under the names of two sitting senators
|
| - Did that dumbass Harlem Shake thing with a pizzagate conspiracy
| theorist
|
| - Became a rubber stamp for Sinclair Media and
|
| - Tried to kill a broadband assistance program that subsidized
| internet connections for the economically unstable and poor
|
| - Got a literal gun from the NRA for his "courage" in killing net
| neutrality
|
| - Was investigated by his own agency for alleged corruption as he
| pushed to dismantle media consolidation rules
|
| - Published report claiming broadband market was magically fixed
| by repealing net neutrality
|
| - Ignored 22 million comments supporting net neutrality
|
| - Tried to reclassify cell phone data service as "broadband
| internet"
|
| - Allowed phone call rates for incarcerated people to skyrocket
|
| [1]: https://www.vice.com/en/topic/ajit-pai
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| If a silver-lining is possbile from all this, way more people
| know about Net-Neutrality and now think it's important.
| parineum wrote:
| Way more people have heard the phrase "net neutrality", think
| it's important and still have no idea what it is.
|
| I'm not sure that's progress.
| sli wrote:
| I'm sure we all remember the "Obamacare for the internet"
| comment.
| godelmachine wrote:
| Do we stand a change to reverse the damages he has inflicted?
| dangjc wrote:
| There's a good chance to get decent commissioners approved by
| a Democratic Senate. They can start a process to make new
| rules. Federal agencies have a rule making process which
| requires evidence and findings, especially to change prior
| rules. Hopefully there will be mounting evidence that many of
| these changes were harmful.
| DamnYuppie wrote:
| I haven't been following the aftermath of the net neutrality
| decision. Are there any data points that point to the impact of
| it being worse for most consumers, either in access or cost?
| aaomidi wrote:
| https://www.naruc.org/nrri/nrri-activities/net-neutrality-
| tr...
|
| Your average HN user is probably from a state that still has
| NN.
| ViViDboarder wrote:
| Net Neutrality never really became status quo. It wasn't in
| place for long enough to see any significant challenges. It's
| removal was a return to status quo, so there would be nothing
| to measure.
|
| As a consumer, one thing that's been visible to me, without
| Net Neutrality, is connectivity companies (AT&T, Verizon,
| Comcast, etc) buying media companies (HBO, Hulu, etc) and
| then implementing bandwidth caps and then zero rating their
| traffic to get edges over their competitors who don't control
| the networks.
|
| There is some history of it, including links to research, on
| Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality
| tzs wrote:
| > Approved T-Mobile / Sprint merger
|
| That was a good thing. Sprint was toast either way. We were
| going to go from 4 to 3 major carriers.
|
| The only real question was whether we should have the remains
| of Sprint be used to strengthen T-Mobile, which was the weakest
| of the remaining major carriers, or let Verizon and/or AT&T get
| Sprint's goodies.
| causalmodels wrote:
| I'm interested to see what Dish Network's (I think this is
| the right company) next move is. They are sitting on a ton of
| spectrum and now have a legal level to use their competitors'
| infrastructure to slingshot themselves into being
| competitive.
| say_it_as_it_is wrote:
| I learned from Ajit Pai that a public comment period requires
| identity verification
| java-man wrote:
| used my name to kill net neutrality.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-01-20 23:03 UTC)