Does anyone know if this will be on TV? If so what channel and what time?

@Rawkus: Probably not as the speech is taking place outside of the FCC, and the information was leaked to the media.

The FCC is announcing a proposed rule which is usually just a paper document/federal register notice. There will be no hearing, and likely no public comment at this point, but there will be a period of time, usually 90 days for all concerned parties to respond and provide comments.

Cable/Internet providers will have their say, and this proposed rule will likely not be the final rule, and the final rule probably won't be published for 5+ years.

Why do I have a feeling that ISPs are going to use these "new government regulations" to jack up rates and/or introduce more metered broadband?

Remember folks, the road to hell is paved with good intentions...

Rather sad that American business has become a plan to grab as many customers as you can, lock them in to your offering by getting rid of the competition or making it difficult to switch to competitor's service, then milk those customers with higher and higher fees/rates until they reach the breaking point.

What happened to being the best at what you do and keeping customers because they feel they are getting value for what they are paying for.

@tailstoo: "what happened to being the best at what you do and keeping customers because they feel they are getting value for what they are paying for?"

It was crushed under the weight of shareholders and wall street demanding higher and higher and higher profits.

Or more fees, if you are using the consumerist version :D

Kitteh in the tube is so cute.

I saw this in the paper this morning and went "YAAAAY!" Although I don't think they have that much to worry about. There will always be people who prefer to have cable because they've always had it, who don't like to watch shows on the computer, who aren't computer-savvy, etc. They need to stop fighting Internet content and find a way to work with or around it. They still don't get it. It's here to stay.

Just remember: The internets are a series of tubes filled with lolcats. Example #2 is up top. :)

@tailstoo: Too bad I can't dump my cellphone like I did cable.
*sigh*

@tailstoo: When was American business any different than that? We've always ascribed to the most extreme form of capitalism we can, and this is just a part of that. There were never any "good old days."

@smartmuffin: You're screwed either way. Pick your poison, a Network Improvement Fee (if net neutrality passes), or a Network Management Fee (if they get to throttle customers).

@tailstoo: Isn't that what capitalism is all about?

This will lead to either of these two things, but most likely both: a) higher prices and/or b) caps.

Frankly, the ISPs don't care what kind of content goes through their tubes. They care about how much content. So after the regulations go through, they're going to go the more direct route of bandwidth caps. And, of course, price hikes, because any government regulation is a nice excuse for that.

I hope part of what they say is that companies cannot cap service. Some are generous right now but that will inevitably go down. there are 4 post grad adults in my household. if everyone streams netflix, internet radio, plays xbox live, downloads a few things, bittorrent, skype, etc then obviously i will show up as a heavy user. Why should i be penalized because the other household only has 1 person living there.

@dragonfire81: well there is also the people who will go for whatever the cheapest is no matter the quality, and this isn't just a small group of people they are the people who have made places like walmart an empire.

I seek high quality products with great service, but I don' think that I am in the same mindset as the average consumer, which is too bad, because quality almost always trumps cheap.

1) The companies that choose to meter or cap service will go out of business. They know this is an unpopular idea. We know that it's just an excuse to not invest in infrastructure. There will be a company that chooses to invest and they will become the leader as people realize their metered/capped internet is not as useful.

2) The FCC has already told Comcast they can't throttle traffic. Comcast was throttling traffic not because they cared what was going through it, but because they don't want to invest in infrastructure. They'd rather leave "well enough" alone and reap profits.

3) I do agree that the prices of internet access will increase as a result, regardless of what that result is. This is a non-factor because people will either find a provider that is more affordable or (in most cases) will be forced to utilize whatever option is available (where I live the only cable option is Comcast).

@bravo369:

Live by Net Neutrality, then die by it too.

This is good new, but without more competition for internet providers, it's of limited value. Comcast and others will increase rates and/or put in data caps. But since there's often only 1 or 2 choices for most people, there's no competition to drive down rates.

Dumped the Comcast last week. I'm still getting used to it, but online downloads are not quite ready for prime time, forgive the pun. Not that I'm getting much lag even at my lowly 3MB; it's just the piecemeal factor. Some things on fancast, some on YouTube, whoops, that old show is playing in Portugese! And say, when is that final Eureka ep going online? Still, I grin at the Comcast ads warning of the DAAAAAAAAANGERS of downloading from non-trusted sites. Beware! The! Internet! (So dangerous I'm sure Comcast will get out of the online connectivity business any day now.)

Thank goodness, our little home town monopoly Comporium loves to mess with vonage, hulu, and anything else that threatens their phone, cable tv, internet monopoly. Plus they already have bandwidth caps. Watch a few movies on Netflix or a game on ESPN360 and your speed gets slammed down to dialup.

Since there has been so much bullshit and so many half truths and outright lies put out by the big players in this controversy I have to choose sides based on the players themselves. Consequently ,if AT & T and Comcast are 'fer it ,I'm 'agin it . When companies of that size try to sell their position to me based on whats "best for our customers ", my bullshit detector screeches like a fucked cat. They care about you like a hungry wolf cares about a herd of sheep.
Also , I have to disagree with the more discouraged posters here that think that this HAS to mean higher prices and caps and what not. The same mentality said that if the old Bell monopoly were broken up that prices would go through the roof and the lack of ross subsidization would doom local ,rural service. Actually ,we have more service choices than ever before and the price of long distance has been effectively reduced to zero . (Remember when you had to call after 7 P.M. and on weekends because that was the only way to be able to afford it ?) I believe that the innovator copanies that are pushing net neutrality will eventually devise a way to sidestep /eviscerate bandwidth caps. It doesn't make any sense to do it before they are in place.

Comcast , AT & T ,the bell tolls for thee.

@HogwartsAlum: As cute as it is, it is giving me uncontrollable twitches. Someone needs to scratch off the crusty debris from under the eyes.

@henrygates: Isn't that what capitalism is all about?

There are many necessities for capitalism to be efficient, and they are not all satisfied for cable/internet industry. A couple assumptions -- not an exhaustive list -- for free market capitalism to be efficient are

(1) Ability for a new company to challenge a monopoly; this does not mean competition MUST arise, only that it is possible for a private company to challenge the monopoly. It is unclear whether this is possible for cable and internet providers.

(2) Transparency in what you buy. If you cannot know the quality or understand the terms of what you are buying, then you cannot knowingly pick the best product. That is, the best producer in the market isn't necessarily the most successful; the best deceiver often is.

Ideally, the free market is the regulator in capitalism; it picks winners based on quality and price standards. However, when any of the assumptions/premises for an efficient capitalistic system fail, then the market may no longer be efficient and regulation from outside the market may be necessary (it is unclear how to optimally regulate these scenarios so I won't express further thoughts on this). Cable/internet companies are a perfect example of a failure of assumption (1). Contracts written with confusing terms that consumers are expected to read, understand, and sign are examples of a failure of assumption (2).

Also, if it is of any interest, this week's This American Life was about company collusion, which is yet another potential problem that may undermine the efficiency of the free market:

[www.thisamericanlife.org]

@baquwards: Exactly. Why spend $20 every couple of months replacing your crappy Chinese prison labor made toaster when you can buy a refurbished vintage one for $150 that you'll have to specify in your will who it will go to since it will out last you.

This is very unfortunate for users like me who can't afford higher fees for network management and can't afford to be capped either since we already have slow internet from AT&T.

So, for a problem of so little competition that was caused by government regulation requires more? How does that make sense? You want the government to ensure that your packets are treated fairly? How do you suppose they'll do that?

The double-speak is painfully obvious. The EFF has sued AT&T and other telecoms for allowing the NSA to eavesdrop on all of our phone conversations, emails, instant messages and now even social networks (see Wired magazine's coverage for more). Yet, to logistically monitor all of the data, the FCC would need to do precisely what privacy advocates have accused the NSA of doing. And oddly enough, the EFF also supports "net neutrality."

@MooseOfReason: Disagree. The government didn't regulate UNTIL there was a monopoly. Once local towns saw that, they decided they needed to try to manage them like power companies, gas companies, etc. I think the monpolies happened because a lack of government regulation. Whoever owned the pipes, won, because the costs of entry are too high.

Then cable companies lobbied politicians to prevent competition.

@anajay:
I don't believe that there should be regulation stating that ALL companies cannot cap service.

Perhaps companies that serve RESIDENTIAL services should be subject to that, but for businesses it makes no sense.

Just my 2cents.

@Vandelay Import Export: Amen to that, I miss the days when they built stuff that would last. My parents bought a VCR in the early 80s that lasted over 20 years.

@Herbz:

Well, what will probably happen, since they won't be able to say "we're going to limit bravo369's Netflix use, is they'll just implement bandwidth caps, so they can say "we don't care _what_ bits you use, but only care _how many_ you use."

@thereij:

The FCC told Comcast they couldn't throttle _specific applications_. There's nothing saying they can't throttle individual users, so long as the process is application-agnostic.

@smartmuffin:
Don't forget the law of unintended consequences. No matter what the rulling is the industry will find a way to use it to their advantage.

This is change I can believe in!

@Rawkus: Could check CSPAN channels, though seems they would be giving coverage to health care issues more, but worth a try if you are interested.

@smartmuffin: Are there figures anywhere that show what the *average* DSL/cable internet subscriber (be it Comcast, Verizon, Time Warner, etc) uses as far as data each month? Obviously the idea of download caps is shitty, but how many people that aren't trying to host a web sites on their own home server or something else BW-intensive actually will get close to the cap? Is it even worth complaining about?

@smartmuffin:

I had been victim to Comcast's bandwidth management efforts by them using Sandvine's hardware and software. After speaking with an executive response team member, and ultimately the manager of Comcast's NOC (network operations center), they were willing and able to stop using the RST flag in my transmissions which caused my VPN sessions to lock up. I did so by presenting TCP/IP logs using Wireshark showing their abuses.

While I am strongly against their methods for shaping traffic, they do have a legitimate excuse for limiting bandwidth. We do it at work and every ISP must do it as well. The last that I heard, Comcast caps the monthly bandwidth usage at 250gigs of downloads. For now, thats more than enough. I doubt very much that the average web surfing user comes anywhere close to that, but I know that video content streaming is becoming more common and requires a lot more bandwidth, both realtime and cumulative.

It all comes down to quality of service. All providers will have to limit how many users they allow on their network (stop over-selling bandwidth that isn't there). All of us cant ride on the road at the same time and expect to go the posted speed limit.

More users equals less bandwidth.

Omfg the gov. is actually doing something to HELP CONSUMERS???!!!??? I'm actually speechless.

@TCama: Oh, the ISP very much cares about What Kind of Content when they are also the cable company. Comcast doesn't want you watching your shows on fancast or Hulu or Youtube. That's their cable business. Other ISPs are less invested in requiring you to watch cable - AT&T DSL hasn't got the kind of throttling reports/complaints that Comcast does. We'll see if that changes as their UVerse fiber optic cable service starts taking off in areas.

@Vandelay Import Export: Hey, we have a lot of prisoners in America with nothing to do...

@Vandelay Import Export: my microwave is my parents wedding gift.

@NeverLetMeDown: Ahh yes. Thank you for reminding me!

@HogwartsAlum: Umm..I have cable because I watch things besides TV shows and the almighty Internet hasn't done a good job of providing new documentaries and live sports. It's not entirely about not embracing the times. The Internet has to play catchup with cable in providing new content and live sports.

@banmojo: Don't get your hopes up yet. The FCC is simply planning on announcing a proposed rule (basically a draft rule) for public comment. We are still probably 4-5 years at best before any new law is enacted, and the cable and internet providers will have an opportunity to comment on the rule and try to shape it in a way that is favorable to them (but consumers will also have an opportunity to comment).

@uber_mensch:

Then what happened to all the 'dark fiber' that was touted all throughout the 90s - certainly we haven't turned that stuff on yet...

I say providers should continue to improve and innovate, rather than reduce and remain stagnant.

@memphis9: You're right. However Comcast doesn't mind if you watch Fancast, being that it's a Comcast operated website. ;)

@NeverLetMeDown: I think the problem is that while they may not throttle specific traffic, they're definitely motivated to throttle because of it. If I'm using BT a lot, they may throttle my overall speed. So while it's not direct throttling, it has the same net results.

I wonder if they could get into any trouble for it? I guess it'd be pretty difficult to prove, even if it's painfully clear to users what's going on.

It really gets right up my arse though. Restrictions are set on what they can or cannot do, and they just find loopholes that allow them to functionally continue doing what they've been doing. Makes me wonder if these rules and regulations are ultimately going to be worth much of anything. I guess we'll see.

No warning bells for any of you?

This is the FCC's 'in' to grab more regulatory control of the internet. I'm calling it.

@TheSpatulaOfLove: Improve and innovate = less profits for the CEO to buy another mansion/jet/ocean liner with. Not gonna happen if they have any say in it.

@thereij: #1 is really irrelevant in many areas for cable where there's only one company operating (and with their 20 year franchise agreement).

"Don't like it here? Go somewhere else (literally because we OWN this area)"