ISPs fear wave of state laws after New York’s $15 broadband mandate

When the FCC isn't regulating, states have more power to impose broadband laws.

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[gsgrego]

Ah, poor little isps.

If you don't like it I'll make you an offer I think we can all agree on.

Spend half the money you do on hookers, drugs, pr, and on donations bribes and spend it on the service you provide.

 

[gsgrego]

South Korea long ago proved that broadband does not need to be expensive to end users. But, you need to let the ISP's pick up the costs from content providers, as in SK, where content providers pay 15x what they do in the US. Sure, this kills a lot of spammy clickbait business models, and the big content providers hate it because those pennies per user do add up at scale. But, it would be a better Internet. In fact, it was moving that way naturally until the big content providers convinced consumers that only they should be allowed to pay for the last mile. So, now we all kick in ~$60/mo to subsidize the content and advertising industry.

No. That's not how it works.

I pay x amount for my home connection.

Then depending on the size of the business or you might pay your local isp for a business connection or you might be buying express route connections.

A company like Netflix is going to be paying for cdns, edge servers, and multiple connections from multiple data centers and businesses locations.

Enterprise companies are going to be on unique contracts with rates the isp itself negotiated.


If American isps who have taken in billions of tax payer money aren't getting enough money from businesses then that's their fault and they apparently suck at doing business.

 

[gsgrego]

The Federal regulations for broadband pricing were always going to be thrown out in favor of state-level action, regardless of who is president or the FCC chair.

The US Constitution clearly delineates what is under state purview and what is under federal purview. None of the legislative powers granted to the federal Congress in the USC (interstate commerce, coining money, declaring war, and establishing post offices) - nor the subsequent the "necessary and proper" clause - grants Congress or the Executive any power to regulate broadband pricing - at least for the majority of ISPs. The reason is because broadband providers have established state-level business offices / companies to whom you remit your monthly bill. A completely in-state transaction is immune from such federal regulation.

Net Neutrality, on the other hand, likely can be regulated federally, should the Congress ever specifically pass legislation authorizing the FCC to do so. This is because 1) the networks in use involve physical links across numerous states, and 2) a core function of using the internet is to make digital and physical purchases - which generally involve interstate commerce.

The NN regulations that were recently struck down were due to a 2024 SCOTUS ruling striking down the "Chevron deference doctrine" - meaning courts can no longer just side with the government arguing that a federal regulation is legit, if the underlying law authorizing the regulation is too ambiguous. Laws now must be unambiguous or any regulatory authority they grant to the Executive could be nullified by the courts if the regulations seem unreasonable to the jurists.

Edit to add: If you guys are going to downvote this, I'd love for you to at least respond and tell me why you disagree so we can have a healthy discussion.

Right, and if the ISP is making less from home users, it will need to make more from those contracts to deliver the same service. That has been evolution of the commercial Internet, from when consumer ISP's all paid for a connection to "the backbone" to when CDN's and transit networks began paying ISP's. But, then Netflix created a brouhaha by overloading their circuits and blaming the ISP's for not carrying more traffic for free. Consumers were largely in agreement with Netflix. The FCC issued a Net Neutrality order, restricting what ISP's could do within their network, and promising to monitor interconnect agreements.

They did not, in fact, restrict these agreements, but the writing was on the wall for ISP's who might have been thinking about depending on increased revenues from interconnects to pay for new infrastructure investments. Notably, the FCC said there would be no restrictions on consumer pricing. Huge win for the content and advertising industry, which we all must subsidize with over priced home connections. Verizon sold off most of its wireline business and bought AOL. Facebook is now worth more than double Comcast + ATT + Verizon combined. We wade through cesspools of content that make us angrier and stupider. Thanks Net Neutrality.

No.

It is not the government's job to step in for business incompetence. If isps are that incompetent at running a business they they can step away and hand control of the business to someone who is competent.

 

[gsgrego]

But the government did step in to regulate how ISP were allowed to manage traffic, largely for the benefit of big content providers, at the expense of consumers. Now they are finally doing the right thing, by capping consumer prices.

I'm sorry. I'll get back to you later. You haven't paid for priority queue.

 

[gsgrego]

Yeah, your ISP will cut you off if you don't pay them. You don't get a free connection just because the party you are communicating with paid for their connection.

Whoosh.

I'm sorry you failed to pay the extra priority fee on top of your monthly service charge. Please try again when you are willing to pay extra on top of your bills.

 

[gsgrego]

ISP interconnects are generally governed by multi-year contracts that specify all the details. If you would rather pay more so that Facebook, advertisers and scammy clickbait sites can pay less, I guess that's your choice.

So in your mind either I pay fees on fees, or the government negotiates profitable contracts for private for profit companies.

No thanks. Those are both terrible.

 

[gsgrego]

What are you talking about? The FCC should have stayed out of the dispute between Netflix and the ISP's, instead of putting their thumb on the scale in favor of the content industry. If there was a problem with too much monopoly power, they should have protected consumers with price caps, as NY is doing now, instead of protecting Netflix, Facebook, etc. Your fees would have then gone down as ISP's picked up more revenue from content providers, and ISP would love their heavy consumers, as they would pull in more revenue from the sending side. Heavy senders like Netflix would probably raise prices, but you have a choice whether to give them your business, whereas you don't have much choice in choosing an ISP.

Ugh.

You clearly do not grasp anything.

What isps wanted to do do was BAD. Not for Netflix or others but for everyone. By creating fast lanes, by requiring fees of certain types of content or product. Or anything similar which is what net neutrality blocked, you end up with websites or content that must then get slowed down or treated as low priority.

Anything like that, especially if allowed by the government, then becomes a barrier that entrenches older and bigger companies who can afford it while penalizing newer companies who now are blocked from competing.


Think of this. Netflix gets to pay for "fast lane" traffic. Now any Netflix competitor is at a service disadvantage to their customer and must also pay for the "fast lane".


And that doesn't include all the horrible problems with double or triple dipping.

I pay for the wire to Netflix. Netflix pays for the wire to me. I pay for the bandwidth to use the connection I pay a monthly fee for. Netflix pays extra to get traffic delivered to me like it's already supposed to.