Democrats Head Off GOP on Net Neutrality Bill

MITCH WAGNER, West Coast Bureau Chief, Light Reading

Technology • January 2015 • Views: 2,518

Kicking off the latest round of political squabbling over net neutrality, Congressional Democrats have revived a bill banning paid prioritization agreements between content providers and service providers.

Just a day after new members of Congress were seated, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Rep. Doris Matsui (D-Calif.) reintroduced The Online Competition and Consumer Choice Act.

The bill, which the two legislators initially introduced last year, “would help prevent the creation of a two-tiered Internet system, ensuring start-ups and entrepreneurs have access to the marketplace and ensuring consumers can access all content equally,” according to a statement on Leahy’s Website.

More: Democrats Head Off GOP on Net Neutrality Bill

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4 comments

CleverToad Jan 7, 2015 8:02:25pm

Cross fingers and hope they can pass it. ‘Hope’ being the operative word, considering the current Congresscritters.

Maggie's Pa Jan 8, 2015 5:59:32am

From the article:

The Republican bill would “likely give the FCC clearer, explicit authority to regulate net neutrality,” according to The Washington Post. That provision could win over some Democrats, but the Republican bill would explicitly ban the agency from classifying Internet providers as Title II carriers.

This could mean higher taxes, as shown here.

The agency would like to make Internet service a public utility, placing broadband under Title II regulation of the Communications Act of 1934. This move would make broadband subject to New Deal-era regulation, and have significant consequences for U.S. taxpayers.

Under this decision to reclassify broadband, Americans would face a host of new state and local taxes and fees that apply to public utilities. These new levies, according to the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), would total $15 billion annually. On average, consumers would pay an additional $67 for landline broadband, and $72 for mobile broadband each year, according to PPI’s calculations, with charges varying from state to state.

WhatEVs Jan 8, 2015 3:46:12pm

re: #2 Maggie’s Pa

You’ll pay even more if the telecoms are allowed to charge a premium for Netflix or Google, or it takes 10 minutes for a favorite web site page to load.

Souliren Jan 8, 2015 5:53:24pm

I think it’s too early to make these decisions. We did that with utility poles and telephones. Bell had a monopoly most places years ago..

When Cable TV was stating out, the utility companies had the poles. Some Telcos thought they should be in the business so they said cable companies should put in their own poles. We put in the poles, we paid to put them in so we want to do Cable TV ourselves someday maybe and we don’t want you competing with us on our own poles.

One problem they had, for most jurisdictions was they already had reciprocal agreements with the power company. The cost of a twelve inch space on a pole was determined for the cases where the telco had one more or less pole in than the power company.

In Canada (and I think in the USA) Cable TV companies would pay the telephone and power companies rent per pole, per month. (20 years ago it was about six dollars)

What was going on here in Canada was, a guy who understood the technology and his two brothers working out of a pickup truck instead of a bucket truck with hydraulic tools, could provide Cable TV service to a community for less than 25% of what it would cost the utilities to provide it and it would be better. Customer service would be better, the price would be lower and they owners would have a business where costs were 50% of pre-tax cash flow. A lot of small guys got rich and a lot of customers got a cool new service.

There were dozens of smart folks with little capital that did very well by being able to get access to the poles at the same cost as everyone else. (the cost of the access was derived from the cost of putting the pole in and maintaining it plus inefficiencies and extortion)

Today, the Telephone companies are a major cable tv provider, not because they own the poles but because their service, technology and price are competitive with the cable tv companies.

Today, in many cities, you can have a choice of providers for your home cable/telephone/internet service. They are all quite good.

I don’t think we would be in this position today if regulations had allowed the carriers to sell access to the poles at other than the “fair share of the costs” price.

For now. For this time. I support Obama’s and most /.ers because I think it will allow a smart techie and his marketing buddy who have a combined net worth of $3500. to launch a product that no one else had even dreamed of that will be worth billions and provide an improvement in many people’s quality of life. If the Republican view on this prevails, it will be good for the carriers and the established high bandwidth services but the entrance fee for a start up will be prohibitive.

Some day, some how though, we need to find a way for the Netflexes to be able to sell a consistent high bandwidth product to a household. They should be able to buy and pay for that channel to my house if I choose to pay them for their service.

I apologize if the above ramble doesn’t make sense.
*takes another sip of Jim Beam*

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