By Dan Calabrese ——Bio and Archives--November 21, 2017
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“Under my proposal, the federal government will stop micromanaging the Internet,” Pai said in a written statement.
“Instead, the FCC would simply require Internet service providers to be transparent about their practices so that consumers can buy the service plan that’s best for them and entrepreneurs and other small businesses can have the technical information they need to innovate,” he said. Under Pai’s plan, which he said would be publicly released Wednesday ahead of a Dec. 14 vote, the Federal Trade Commission would take over the job of policing Internet service providers for online privacy. Pai called for a repeal in April and the Republican-controlled FCC voted 2-1 along party lines a month later to begin a formal rule-making process. The agency now has a 3-2 Republican majority. Pai’s two GOP colleagues, Mike O’Rielly and Brendan Carr, are expected to support the repeal. The agency received more than 22 million comments about the fate of the rules, which are supported by public interest groups and liberal activists but opposed by telecommunications companies and conservatives.
The rules prohibit AT&T Inc., Comcast Corp., Charter Communications Inc. and other Internet service providers from blocking websites, slowing connection speeds and charging extra for faster delivery of certain content.What this does is return the decision making in service packages to the parties to the deal - the ISP and the consumer. If the consumer is willing to accept varying prices for different speeds, it's really no the federal government's job to say he or she shouldn't. And if consumers aren't willing to accept that, then ISPs have to decide how badly they want to keep their customers. A bigger issue here is the federal government's power to simply decide a certain industry is going to be treated like a regulated utility. There was no reason to do that in the case of ISPs, regardless of how importaant the Internet may be to people's lives. Regulated utilities like electric or gas companies are usually the only providers in a given area, so regulation is a way to mitigate their otherwise unmitigated powers of monopoly over the market. There is no reason for that in the case of ISPs, since consumers have plenty of competitve options. I realize there's a segment of society that's convinced every service provider is simply looking for opportunities to screw you, take your money and give you nothing of value in return. That's how they get you! You probably know someone who says that about everyone and everything.
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